The working memory model

Question 1

who came up with this theory?

Answer 1

Baddely and Hitch

Question 2

what type of memory does this theory focus on?

Answer 2

short-term memory.

Question 3

how many components of short-term memory are there according to this model?

Answer 3

4

Question 4

what is the central executive?

Answer 4

an attentional process that monitors incoming data. Allocates data to the certain slave systems. Has limited processing capacity.

Question 5

what is the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 5

stores visual or spatial information. Helps navigate around and interact with their environment through mental pictures.

Question 6

what are the two sub-divisions of the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 6

visual cache and inner scribe.

Question 7

what is the visual cache?

Answer 7

a passive store of form and colour

Question 8

what is the inner scribe?

Answer 8

an active store holding the relationships between objects in 3D space.

Question 9

what is the phonological loop?

Answer 9

a part of stm which deals with auditory information, both written and spoken. Preserves the order info arrives. (has limited capacity of what can be said in 2 seconds)

Question 10

what are the two sub-divisions of the phonological loop?

Answer 10

primary acoustic phonological store and the articulatory process.

Question 11

what is the primary acoustic phonological store?

Answer 11

the inner ear that holds words which have recently been heard.

Question 12

what is the articulatory process?

Answer 12

the inner-voice which holds information such as sub-vocal repetition.

Question 13

what is the episodic buffer?

Answer 13

added by Baddely in 2000.
-a temporary store intergrading information from other sub systems rather than separate strands. It is a bridge between working memory and LTM. Maintains a sense of time recording events happening.

Question 14

evidence for the central executive?

Answer 14

Bundge et al (2000) used fMRI to see which parts of the brain werte most active when reading a sentence and recalling the last word in that sentence. The same brain areas were active when doing the single task and when doing the dual-task, but much more activation when doing the dual-task, as there was more attention needed there was more brain. activity shown.

Question 15

counterpoint for the central executive?

Answer 15

the nature of the central executive has been challenged. Baddely (2003) recognised this himself, when he said that the central executive is the most important but least understood component of the WMM. The central executive needs to be more specified than just being ‘attention’

Question 16

evidence for the phonological loop and the articulatory process?

Answer 16

phonological similarity effect, word-length effect, articulatory suppression Baddely et al (1975)

Question 17

evidence for the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 17

Participants were given a visual tracking task. At the same time, they were given one of 2 other tasks; 1 was to describe all the angles on the letter ‘f’ and 2 was to perform a verbal task. Task 1 was very difficult but not 2, because the second task involved 2 different components meaning there must be 2 slave systems Baddely et al (1975)

Question 18

counterpoint to the dual task technique?

Answer 18

the task performed are very artificial and are unlikely to happen in real life. they are carried out in highly controlled, standardised lab settings.

Question 19

evidence for the episodic buffer?

Answer 19

Baddely et al (1987) found that when participants were shown words and then asked for immediate recall, their performance was much better for sentences than for unrelated words meaning that there is an immediate memory store for information that is neither visual or phonological.

Question 20

evidence from brain damaged people?

Answer 20

the case of KF Shallice and Warrington (1970) showed us how his stm of auditory information was worse that his short term memory of visual information, supporting the idea thta there are separate stores.

Question 21

counterpoint from brain damaged people?

Answer 21

however, it is unclear whether KF had any other cognitive impairments, which might have affected his performance on memory tasks.