The Working Model - Baddeley and Hitch Flashcards
What is the WMM and what does it include?
A development of the unitary STM suggesting that memory involves active processing. Includes the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad.
What is the role of the central executive?
It has a supervisory function acting as a filter that determines which attention should be attended to. It processes information from the senses one at a time and directs it to the slave systems.
What are the slave systems of the central executive?
The phonological loop (processing auditory information), the episodic buffer (temporary store) and the visuospatial sketchpad that holds visual and spatial information.
What is the role of the phonological loop?
It is a temporary storage system with two parts - the inner ear and the inner voice. These allow maintenance rehearsal.
What is the role of the visuospatial sketchpad?
It is a temporary store system for visual and spatial information. Consists of the visual cache that stores information on form and colour and the inner scribe that records the arrangement of objects in a visual field.
What is the role of the episodic buffer?
It acts as a temporary store for information which communicates between long term memory and the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad.
How do dual task studies support this model?
It is easier to multi-task if the tasks use different processing systems. For example, visual and verbal.
Why is it hard to read and listen at the same time?
Because the same processing system is being used by working memory. The phonological loop has limited resources and so the tasks compete for these.
KF is a case study supporting the WMM. Briefly outline the study.
KF suffered brain damage from a motorcycle accident damaging his STM. His visuospatial sketchpad was unaffected, however he had a damaged phonological loop. This proves that the STM contains separate components in itself.
Baddeley and Hitch tested their model using a dual task experiment. Briefly outline this.
Participants were asked to repeat a list of numbers and answer to true or false questions (digit span and verbal reasoning tasks). As the number of digits increased the participants took longer to answer verbal reasoning questions suggesting that the verbal reasoning task was processed by the central executive and the digit span task was processed by the phonological loop.
