The working memory model Flashcards
The working memory model: explanation (explanation of components on seperate flashcard but should be in overall explanation)
The WMM was created by Baddeley and Hitch as an explanation based on the MSM that argues the complexity of the STM, citing it as more than a temporary store for transferring informaton to the LTM, and questioned its existence as a single store. So, they proposed a multi-component working memory: the central executive which oversees three slave systems ,the visuospatial sketchpad, phonological loop and the episodic buffer, which process specific types of information.
The working memory model: explanation: Central Executive
A filter to determine which info recieved by the sense organs is and isn’t attended to, by processing info in all sensory forms and directing info to the model’s slave systems and collecting responses. It has a limited capacity and can only cope with one strand of info at a time, and so selectively attends to types of info, allowing us to switch attention between different inputs of information.
The working memory model: explanation: Phonological Loop
The PL deals with auditory info with a limited capacity dtermined by the amount of info that can be spoken out loud in about 2 seconds. It has two seperate stores within: the primary acoustic store (inner ear, storing words recently heard) and the articulatory process (inner voice).
The working memory model: explanation: Visuo-spatial Sketchpad
The VSS deals with visual and spatial items and the relationships between them, which is coded and rehearsed through the use of mental pictures. It is subdivided into a visual cache, storing visual material about form and colour as well as an inner scribe which handles spatial relationships and rehearses and transfers info in the visual cache to the CE.
The working memory model: explanation: Episodic Buffer
The episodic buffer is a general store, explaining how its possible to temporary store information combined together from the CE, the PL and the VSS ato transfer to LTM. It has no storage capaciy.
The working memory model: evaluation: Strength 1
supported by objecttive research that support the existence of seperate stores within the short term memory. PET scans show the PL and the VSS as loated in different brain areas which show brain activation in the left hemisphere of the brain with visual tasks, and activation in the right hemisphere with spatial information. This supports idea of dividing the VSS into a seperate visual cache and inner scribe, with this objective research acting as concrete evidence fir the legitimacy of this model.
The working memory model: evaluation: Strength 2
A Shallice and Warrington (1974) case study reported that brain-damaged patient KF could recall verbal but not visual information immediately after its presentation, which supports the WMM’s claim that separate short-term stores manage short-term phonological and visual memories.
The working memory model: evaluation: Limitation 1
Despite providing more detail of STM than the multi-store model, the WMM has been criticized for being too simplistic and vague, e.g. it is unclear what the central executive is, or its exact role in attention. This vagueness means it can be used to explain almost any experimental results, therfore producing an inherently circular argument.
The working memory model: evaluation: Limitation 2
Model fails to explain vital elements of memory by focusing soley on STMS. For example, it cannot explain the link between working memory and long term memory, this suggest a lack of depth in the model. Surely if there are seperate stores of STM, then there must be seperate stores for the LTM as well, which has been proven by seperate research known as episodic and semantic, but this model makes no effort to explain these, and is therfore reductionist in nature.
