wmm Flashcards
What are the parts of the wmm?
central executive
phonological loop
visuo-spatial sketchpad
episodic buffer
What’s the central executive?
This controls & coordinates the operations of the other components.
Required to perform several tasks:
- Focus and switch attention (decided what to pay attention to or ignore)
- Selects problem solving strategies
- Connects working memory to long term memory.
But it has very limited capacity and can usually only complete one task at a time!
What’s the phonological loop?
Processes everything to do with sound and is split in half: Phonological Store (inner ear) & Articulatory Control System (inner voice).
What’s the phonological store?
Holds auditory memory traces for a few seconds before they fade (limited capacity).
Receives external sound information from the environment and receives auditory information from our own internal speech via the articulatory control system.
What’s the articulatory control system?
Still has very limited capacity.
Prepares all speech and allows us to think in words e.g., mental arithmetic.
Is your inner voice/sub vocal.
Is not determined by capacity but time – how long it takes you to say something.
Allows maintenance rehearsal and the capacity of this ‘loop’ is believed to be two seconds worth of what you can say
What’s the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
Stores visual and/or spatial information when required.
Also split into two parts: Visual cache – stores visual data e.g., colour & Inner scribe – records the arrangement of objects in visual fields e.g., locations and movement.
3-4 item capacity
What’s the episodic buffer?
Temporary store for information from all other stores in WMM.
Allows for bigger link to LTM and wider cognitive processes like perception.
Brings together material from the other subsystems into a single memory rather than separate strands.
Makes sense of things by sequencing, especially time (episodes).
Baddeley (2012) found that it has a limited capacity of approximately 4 chunks.
What did Baddeley (1975) do and find?
Gave participants two visual tasks e.g., following a light around a screen and looking at the letter F, tracing all of its edges. Participants were also given a visual and verbal task at the same time.
Found that participants could do the verbal and visual task quite well, but found it incredibly difficult to do two visual tasks at the same time, highlighting that there must be two systems in VSS
What are the strengths of the wmm?
Supported from studies that look at dual task performance. Baddeley et al (1975) found that P’s had difficult performing two tasks that used the same component (visuo-spatial sketchpad) e.g. tracking a light and describing the letter F. This supports the WMM as it shows that there is separate stores for different types of short term information, and we cannot complete tasks if they both use the same component. Link to the example above (visual and verbal were fine)
Supported by findings from case studies. KF suffered from brain damage in which his STM was damaged- he was able to process visual information for example, remember things he read himself but could not remember auditory information like things that other people read to him. The WMM suggests there are separate stores for auditory and visual processing (VSS and PL). This is a strength because KFs brain damages supports the suggestions of the WMM. This increases the applicability of the model to real life.
However this was a case study
What are the limitations of the wmm?
there is a lack of clarity over the Central Executive. It has been argued that this component doesn’t really explain very much- the information we have is limited. Baddeley identifies this component as being the most important aspect in the WMM. This causes a problem as the WMM can be criticised for not fully explaining its model of memory. We know that it directs the attention to the other components/systems but we don’t know exactly how it does this.
Reductionist
