The Working Memory Model

Question 1

What is the working memory model?

Answer 1

An explanation of the memory used when working on a task.

Question 2

Who created this model?

Answer 2

Baddeley and Hitch - 1974

Question 3

Why did Baddeley and Hitch believe the STM was not just one store, but a number of different stores?

Answer 3

If you do two things at the same time and they are both visual tasks, you perform them less well than if you do them separately.

If you do two things at the same time and one is visual whereas the other involves sound, then there is no interference. You do them as well simultaneously as you would do them separately.

Question 4

What is dual task performance?

Answer 4

Doing two things at the same time

Question 5

What are the parts of the WWM?

Answer 5

Central executive
Visuo-spatial sketchpad
Phonological loop
Episodic buffer

Question 6

What is the central executive?

Answer 6

Monitors and coordinates all other mental functions in working memory.

Question 7

What is the function of the CE?

Answer 7

To direct attention to particular tasks, determining at any time how the brains resources (slave systems) are allocated to tasks.

Data arrive from the senses or from LTM

Question 8

What’s the capacity of the CE?

Answer 8

A very limited capacity - it can’t attend to too many things at once and has no capacity for storing data.

Question 9

What is the phonological loop?

Answer 9

Codes speech sounds in working memory, typically involving maintenance rehearsal (why its referred to as a loop).

It also preserves the order of information

Question 10

What is maintenance rehearsal?

Answer 10

Repeating words over and over again

Question 11

What’s the capacity of the PL?

Answer 11

Limited

Question 12

What is the PL subdivided into?

Answer 12

The phonological store

An articulatory process

Question 13

What is the phonological store?

Answer 13

Holds the words you hear

Question 14

What’s an articulatory process?

Answer 14

Used for words that are heard or seen - they are silently repeated, like an inner voice.

Question 15

What’s the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 15

Codes visual information in terms of separate objects as well as the arrangement of these objects in one’s visual field.

Question 16

What is visual and spatial information?

Answer 16

Visual - what things look like

Spatial - physical relationship between things

Question 17

When is the visuo-spatial sketchpad used?

Answer 17

When you have to plan a spatial task (like getting from one room to another)
Temporarily stores visual and/or spatial information

Question 18

Who suggested that the visuo-spatial sketchpad can be divided?

Answer 18

Logie -1995

Question 19

What are the parts of the visuo-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 19

Visual cache

Inner scribe

Question 20

What is the visual cache?

Answer 20

Stores information about visual items, e.g. form and colour

Question 21

What is the inner scribe?

Answer 21

Stores arrangement of objects in the visual field

Question 22

What is the episodic buffer?

Answer 22

Receives input from many sources, temporarily stores this information, and then integrates it in order to construct a mental episode of what is being experienced.

It also maintains a sense of time sequencing.

Question 23

Why/when was the episodic buffer?

Answer 23

Baddeley (2000) added it because he realised the model needed a general store

Question 24

What’s the capacity of the episodic buffer?

Answer 24

Limited

Question 25

What does the episodic buffer integrate information from?

Answer 25

The central executive
Phonological loop
Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Question 26

Where does the episodic buffer send information?

Answer 26

To the LTM

Question 27

What are the evaluative points?

Answer 27

Strengths -
Dual task performance
Evidence from brain-damaged patients
Evidence for the phonological loop and articulatory process

Limitations -
The central executive
Evidence from brain-damaged patients

Question 28

What is meant by dual task performance?

Answer 28

The main reason for developing the WMM was to account for dual task performance.

Baddeley and Hitch (1976) supported the existence of the CE in one such study.

Question 29

What was the procedure of Baddeley and Hitch’s study?

Answer 29

Task 1 occupied the CE (e.g. participants were given a statement ‘B if followed by A’ and shown two letters such as ‘AB’ and asked to say true or false).

Task 2 either involved the articulatory loop (e.g. asked to say ‘the the the’ repeatedly) or involve both the CE and the articulatory loop (saying random digits).

Question 30

What were the findings of Baddeley and Hitch’s study?

Answer 30

Task 1 was slower when task 2 involved both CE and the articulatory loop.

This demonstrates the dual task performance effect and shows that the CE is one of the components of working memory.

Question 31

What is meant by evidence from brain-damaged patients?

Answer 31

Studies of individuals with brain damage also support WMM.

Shallice and Warrington (1970) studied a man called KF whose short-term forgetting of auditory information was much greater than that of visual stimuli.
In addition his auditory problems were limited to verbal material such as letters and digits but not meaningful sounds (such as a phone ringing). Thus his brain damage seemed to be restricted to the phonological loop.

Another patients SC, had generally good learning abilities with the exception of being unable to learn word pairs that were presented out loud.
This suggests damage to the phonological loop (Trojano and Grossi, 1995).

Another patient, LH, who had been involved in a road accident, performed better on spatial tasks than those involving visual imagery (Farah, 1988).
This suggests separate visual and spatial systems.

Question 32

What is meant by the central executive?

Answer 32

There is some concern about the CE - what exactly is it? The answer appears to be that it allocates resources and is essentially the same as ‘attention’.
Some psychologists feel this is too vague and doesn’t really explain anything.
Critics also feel that the notion of a single CE is wrong and that there are probably several components.

Esligner and Damasio (1985) studied EVR, who had a cerebral tumour removed. He performed well on tests requiring reasoning, which suggested that his central executive was intact; however, he has poor decision-making skills (he would spend hours trying to decide where to eat, for example), which suggests that in fact his CE was not wholly intact.

In summary the account offered of the CE is unsatisfactory because it fails to explain anything and because it is probably more complex that currently represented.

Question 33

what did Esligner and Damasio do?

Answer 33

Esligner and Damasio (1985) studied EVR, who had a cerebral tumour removed.
He performed well on tests requiring reasoning, which suggested that his CE was intact;
However, he has poor decision-making skills (he would spend hours trying to decide where to eat, for example),
Which suggests that in fact his CE was not wholly intact.

Question 34

What is meant by evidence from brain-damaged patients?

Answer 34

Some key evidence comes for the WWM comes from case studies of individuals who have suffered serious brain damage.

There are a number of problems with using such evidence.

First of all, the process of brain injury is traumatic, which may in itself change behaviour so that a person performs worse on certain tasks.

Second, such individuals may have other difficulties such as difficulties paying attention and therefore underperform on certain tasks.

Question 35

What is meant by evidence for the phonological loop and auditory process?

Answer 35

The PL explains why the word length effect occurs.

It seems that the PL holds the amount of information that you can say in 2 seconds (Baddeley, 1975).

This makes it hard to remember a list of long words such as ‘association’ and ‘representative’ compared to short words like ‘harm’ and ‘twice’.
The longer words can’t be rehearsed on the PL because they don’t fit.

However, the word-length effect disappears if a person is given an articulatory suppression task, for example if you are asked to say ‘the, the, the…’ while reading the words.
This repetitive task ties up the articulatory process and means you can’t rehearse the shorter words more quickly than the longer ones, so the word-length effect disappears.

This is evidence for the articulatory process.

Question 36

What’s the word length effect?

Answer 36

The fact that people can cope between with short words than long words in the working memory (STM).