The Working Memory Model Flashcards
The working memory model: central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer. Features of the model: coding and capacity.
What are the assumptions of the working memory model?
1.) STM is made up of different stores/components responsible for processing different types of info
2.) Dual-task performance suggests we are less able to perform similar types of tasks at the same time
3.) Only about STM
4.) Pictorial representation of memory
- Proposed by Baddeley and Hitch
Outline the different components of the working memory model
- Central executive: drives the whole system, directs attention, attends to the most important thing (cannot pay attention to everything at once), very limited capacity
- Phonological loop: auditory information (spoken and written), phonological store holds speech based info for 1-2 secs, auditory process silently processes/repeats info (maintenance rehearsal)
- Visuospatial sketchpad: visual and spatial information, inner scribe stores the arrangement of objects, visual cache is the physical characteristics (e.g. colours), limited capacity
- Episodic buffer integrates info to and from other subsystems and LTM to create unitary episode
What are two strengths of the working memory model?
1.) Support from case studies: Shallice and Warrington studied patient KF who had brain damage that caused poor STM ability for verbal info (PL) but not visual info (VSS)
- Counter argument: patients with brain damage not representative of the population as a whole
2.) Experimentation: Baddeley had one group do two visual tasks simultaneously, the other did a visual and a verbal task, those that did two visual tasks found it more difficult to complete (dual task performance)
What is one weakness of the research into the WMM?
1.) Methodological issues: artificial environment lacks ecological validity, tasks lack mundane realism, not representative cannot be applied to real life
