SL - Cognitive processing - Models of memory - working memory model

Question 1

Baddeley and Hitch (Theory)

Answer 1

Basis -> argued that STM in MSM is more complicated than suggested

Central executive -> attends to the allocation of information in the WMM

Phonological loop -> Deals with spoken and written information, holds two more stores:
Phonological store -> holds information for 1-2 seconds.
Articulatory control process —> rehearses information from the phonological store. It circulates information like a tape loop. If we repeat it, we can retain the information in working memory.

Visuo-spatial sketchpad -> deals with visual and spatial information.

Episodic buffer -> Acts as a ‘backup’ store that communicates with both long-term memory and the components of working memory.

Evaluation ->

✔ KF -> KF suffered brain damage from a motorcycle accident that damaged his short-term memory. KF’s impairment was mainly for verbal information - his memory for visual information was largely unaffected.
This shows that there are separate STM components for visual information (VSS) and verbal information (phonological loop).
✔ Supported by Hitch and Baddeley (1976)

❌ Not a full, complete model of memory -> Working memory only involves STM, so it is not a comprehensive model of memory (as it does not include SM or LTM).
❌ Central executive underexplained -> This is shown with EVF. He had a tumour removed and could still perform well on tests require reasoning, implying the central executive was intact, but could not make simple decisions, which suggests his CE was damaged. This suggests there are many components to the CE and only one was damaged. Furtehrmroe, There is little direct evidence for how the central executive works and what it does and its capacity has never been measured.

Question 2

Hitch and Baddeley (1976)

Answer 2

Aim ->
To determine whether working memory is also used in information processing along with information storage.

Method ->
Ppts sat four conditions. In each one, they had to complete a ‘verification task’, that involved determining whether a sentence was true or false which increased in difficulty over time (The following statement is true vs the following statement is not incorrect).
In condition one, this was all the ppts had to do. In subsequent conditions, ppts also had to say something out loud (repeating “the”, repeating “one-two-three-four-five-six”, or repeating a series of six random digits). This was all done at the same time as the verification task.
H&B recorded the mean time it took to complete the verification tasks in each condition, plus the error rate for this task.

Results -> As articulation difficulty increases, the time taken to complete the task increases. Time taken to complete tasks also increases if the grammatical form of the verification task became more complex.

Conclusion -> it is possible to complete two tasks at the same time when at least one of them requires little processing. When processing is more demanding and needs the same part of working memory for two different activities, performance is severely diminished.

Evaluation ->

✔ High validity -> Good control and clear operationalization. The use of repeated measures controlled for individual differences so allows us to have higher trust in the results
✔ Supported by/supports the Working memory model.

❌ Validity challenged -> Bad ecological validity, mundane realism, and practice effects. Not a real task, in an unnatural setting and ppts may have gotten better at tasks as they did the tasks again.
❌ STM and its support (Glanzer and Cunitz (1966), Wood and Cowan (1995)).