The Working Memory Model

Question 1

What is the WMM?

Answer 1

An explanation of how the STM is organised and how it functions

Question 2

What is the central executive?

Answer 2

An attentional process that monitors incoming data, makes decisions and allocates the slave systems to tasks - very limited processing capacity

Question 3

What is the phonological loop?

Answer 3

It deals with auditory information and preserves them in the order in which information arrives

Question 4

What does the phonological store store?

Answer 4

The words you hear

Question 5

What is the articulatory process?

Answer 5

Allows maintance rehearsal

Question 6

What is the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 6

Stores visual and spatial information - has limited capacity
Baddeley (2003) it stores about three or four objects

Question 7

What did Logie (1995) divide the VSS into?

Answer 7

Visual cache - visual data
Inner scribe - the arrangements of objects in a visual field

Question 8

What is the episodic buffer?

Answer 8

Added by Baddeley in 2000, temporary store of info - records episodes that are happening and integrates the info processed by other stores - (2012) limited capacity of four chunks - links it to LTM

Question 8

Evaluation?

Answer 8

Clinical evidence - patient KF struggled verbally but not visually
Dual-task performance - Baddelely (1975) - harder doing 2 visual tasks than a visual and verbal
Lack of clarity - Baddelely (2003)
Studies support the phonological loop - Baddelely (1975) harder to memorise a list of longer words than shorter - called the word length effect - disappears if given an articulatory suppression task -
Brain scanning support - Braver (1997) - found greater activity in the left prefrontal cortex - demand of the CE increases