The working memory model STM

Question 1

Who was this created by?

Answer 1

Baddeley + Hitch (1974)

Question 2

Central executive

Answer 2

-The boss of the slave system, controls the system
-Capacity=unlimited
-Coded=modality free (not specifically coded)
-Directs attention to particular tasks
-The most important store according to Baddeley.

Question 3

Phonological loop

Answer 3

-Deals with acoustic information: phonological store (inner ear)- words you hear + articulatory process (inner voice)- allows maintenance rehearsal
-Capacity- 2 secs worth of info
-Coded- acoustically
-Preserves the order the information arrives in.

Question 4

Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Answer 4

-Deals with visual information
-Processes visual- what things look like- and spatial info- the physical relationship between things e.g. going from your bedroom to kitchen.
-Divided into visual cache- stores info about visual items e.g. shape + colour; inner scribe- deals with the spatial relations e.g. arrangements of objects in the visual field.
-Capacity- 3-4 objects
-Coded- visually

Question 5

Episodic buffer

Answer 5

-An extra storage system which brings together info from other subsystems into a single memory.
-Holds info that relates to both visual and acoustic info.
-Maintains a sense of time sequencing (recording events as they happen)
-Provides a bridge between LTM + working memory
-Capacity- limited 3/4 chunks
-Coded- modality free.

Question 6

AO3 EVAL strength

Answer 6

-Supported by research for dual performance tasks e.g. Baddeley (1973) asked ppts to perform 2 visual tasks: track a moving light whilst describing the letter F.
-Found that ppts performed better when not using the same system for processing.
-Suggests the visuo-spatial sketchpad + phonological loop exist as 3 seperate stores. visuo-spatial sketchpad is overwhelmed with visual info.

Question 7

AO3 EVAL limitation

Answer 7

Some psychologists believe that the CE may consist of separate components
Eslinger + Damasia (1985) studied a patient with a cerebral tumour that had been removed: patient performed well on tasks that required reasoning- suggests CE is in intact; BUT showed lack of decision making skills- suggests CE is not intact
This implies that the CE is more complex and suggests more research should be conducted to fully understand its complexity.