The working memory model Flashcards
What is the working memory model?
An explanation of how short term memory is organised and how it functions.
What part of the mind is the working memory model concerned with?
The part of the mind that is active when we are temporarily storing and manipulating info.
What 4 components does the WMM consist of?
Central executive,
phonological loop,
visuo-spatial sketchpad,
episodic buffer
What does the central executive do?
The central executive monitors incoming data, makes decisions and allocates tasks to the slave systems.
What is the capacity of the central executive like?
It has a very limited processing capacity.
What does the phonological loop do?
It deals with auditory info (so is coded acoustically), and preserves the order in which the info arrives.
What does the phonological loop divide into? and what do they do?
The phonological store - stores the words you hear
The articulatory store - Allows maintenance rehearsal.
The capacity of this is 2 secs.
What does the visuo-spatial sketchpad do?
Stores visual and spatial info.
It has a very limited capacity of about 3-4 objects.
What did Logie (1995) subdivide the visuo-spatial sketchpad into?
The visual cache = stores visual data
The inner scribe = records the arrangement of objects in the visual field.
What does the episodic buffer do?
It’s a temporary store for info, integrating the visual, spatial and verbal info processed by other stores and maintaining a sense of time sequencing.
It basically records events (episodes) that are happening.
Can be seen as the storage component of the CE and has a limited capacity of about 4 chunks.
Episodic buffer links working memory to LTM and wider cognitive processes such as perception.
