The working memory model

Question 1

Who came up with the Working Memory Model?

Answer 1

Baddely and Hitch

Question 2

Evaluation of the Working Memory Model

Answer 2

Nature of the central executive:
- lack of clarity over the nature of the CE
- Baddeley recognised this as he said the CE is the most important but least recognised component of working memory
- The CE needs to be more clearly specified than just being simply ‘attention’
This means that the CE is an unsatisfactory component and this challenges the integrity of the WMM

Dual task performance:
- dual task performance supports the seperate existence of the visuo-spatial sketchpad
- when Baddeleys participants carried out a visual and verbal task at the same time, their performance was similar to when they performed the tasks separately
- but when both tasks were visual, performance declined substantially
- this is because both visual tasks compete for the same slave subsystem, whereas there is no competition when performing visual and verbal tasks together
This shows that there must be a separate slave system the (VSS) that process visual input and a separate one for verbal processing (PL)

Question 3

What is the Central Executive?

Answer 3

Central executive:
- “supervisory role”
- monitors incoming data, focuses and divides our limited attention and allocates ‘slave systems’ to tasks
The CE has a very limited processing capacity and does not store information

Question 4

What is the Phonological loop?

Answer 4

Phonological loop:
- One of the slave systems
- deals with auditory information
- Divided into:
The phonological store = which stores the words you hear
The articulatory processes = which allows maintenance rehearsal, which the capacity of this ‘loop’ is believed to be ‘two seconds’ worth of what you can say

Question 5

What is the Visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 5

Visuo-spatial sketchpad:
- the second slave system
- stores visual and/or spatial information
- limited capacity which according to Baddeley is about three or four objects
- Robert Logie subdivided the VSS into:
The visual cache = which stores visual data
The inner scribe = which records the arrangement of objects in the visual field

Question 6

What is the Episodic buffer?

Answer 6

Episodic buffer:
- the third slave system
- added by Baddeley in 2000
- it is a temporary store for information, integrating the spatial, visual and verbal information processed by other stores and maintaining a sense of time sequencing - basically recording events that are happening
- it can be seen as the storage component of the central executive and has a limited capacity of about four chunks
The episodic buffer links working memory to long-term memory and wider cognitive processes such as perception