Lesson 4

Question 1

Who developed the Working Memory Model?

Answer 1

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Question 2

Central Executive

Answer 2

• Has overall control
• Processes all sensory forms of information
• Involved in problem solving and decision making
• Directs attention to important tasks and decides which one of the slave systems are used to complete them.
• Has a limited capacity

Question 3

Phonological Loop

Answer 3

• Part of the Working Memory Model
• Word based information
• Has two stores, the Phonological store (inner ear) and Articulatory process (inner voice)
• Has a limited capacity and codes information acoustically.
• Can hold around two seconds of what you say

Question 4

Visio-Spatial Sketchpad

Answer 4

• ‘Inner eye’
• Helps us keep a track of our spatial awareness relative to other objects
• Split into two parts, the Visual Cache (stores visual data), and the Inner Scribe (remembers the arrangements of objects around us.)
• Limited capacity and coding is visual

Question 5

Episodic Buffer

Answer 5

• Added to the model in 2000 to explain communication between LTM and the slave systems

Question 6

Baddeley and Hitch (1976)

Answer 6

• Participants were asked to perform a digit span task while taking a verbal reasoning true or false test
• As the number of digits in the digit span test increased, the participants took fractionally longer to repeat it back, and they didn’t make any errors in the verbal reasoning test
• This means that the verbal reasoning test used he central executive system and the digit span task made use of the phonological loop

Question 7

Strengths of the Working Memory Model

Answer 7

• It is able to explain how we are able to dual tasking, like a visual and verbal task at the same time because they use separate parts of the brain
• Baddeley and Hitch (1976)
• It accounts for case studies like K.F, Shallice and Warrington (1970)
• Brain scanning evidence like fMRI scans by D’Esposito et al (1995)
• It can explain how we carry out tasks better than the Multi Store Model can

Question 8

Weaknesses of the Working Memory Model

Answer 8

• The role of the Central Executive is unclear, like in Eslinger and Damasio (1985)
• It is difficult to make generalisations about ‘normal’ memory processing from unique case studies.
• Some of the studies surrounding this model may lack ecological validity because tasks such as recalling a random sequence of numbers in the Digit Span Test are not common everyday activities and lack mundane realism.
• In lab controlled studies like Baddeley and Hitch’s, tightly controlled variables may result in participants showing demand characteristics.
• While the Working Memory Model provides a good idea of the short term memory, it does not provide a clear link between the short and long term memories.

Question 9

Patient K.F

Answer 9

• KF was injured in a motorcycle accident.
• He was able to recall information from his long term memory and remember some of his short term memories, like images such as faces but could not remember sounds (acoustic information).
• Suggests that there are at least two or more components of the short term memory, one of them storing visual information and the other storing acoustic information.

Question 10

D’Esposito et al (1995)

Answer 10

• He used fMRI scans to