WMM

Question 1

What is the Central Executive?

Answer 1

• The CE has a very limited capacity: it cannot attend to too many things at once.
• It processes information from any of the senses, it is modality free.
• The CE acts when attention is given to information and the CE passes information to the slave systems:
  -the phonological loop (PL)
• visuospatial sketchpad (VSS)
• The CE is also responsible for initiating rehearsal processes, rejecting irrelevant information,

Question 2

What is the Phonological Loop?

Answer 2

The phonological loop deals with auditory information and preserves the order of the information.
- It has a limited capacity and temporarily stores information, suggested to be 1- 2 seconds.
-The phonological loop is thought to be used when new words are
learnt.
- It is suggested that the PL has a capacity of 7±2 simple items.

Question 3

What was the Phonological Loop later divided into?

Answer 3

• The phonological store = a store of limited capacity that temporarily holds information like an inner ear which decays in a matter of seconds
• The articulatory process = a rehearsal process that temporarily
  restores/rehearses the decaying information in the phonological store.

Question 4

What is the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad?

Answer 4

The VSS deals with visual (2-D) information and its spatial qualities (3-D).
- The duration of the information in the store is only a fraction of a second.
- The function of the VSS is clearly shown when recalling the number of windows in a house: both knowledge of shapes and knowledge of spatial relationships are required.
- It is suggested that the VSS has a capacity of 3 or 4 simple items.

Question 5

What is the Episodic Buffer? (2000)

Answer 5

• This is a limited capacity store that binds together information from the PL, VSS and LTM to form integrated episodes.
• It is assumed to be controlled by the CE and to be accessible to conscious awareness.
• The EB acts as a global workspace. It is assumed that long-term information is downloaded into this separate store, rather than simply activated in LTM.

It therefore emphasizes the function of working memory to manipulate and create new representations, rather than simply activating old memories.

Question 5

What did Logie divide the VSS into?

Answer 5

The visual cache = stores information about form and colour.

The inner scribe = deals with spatial (2D and 3D information) and movement information.

Question 6

A03 - Dual Task Studies

Answer 6

The WMM is supported by dual-task laboratory-based experiments.

• Baddeley and Hitch found that when 2 tasks are being completed simultaneously both using the PL, then performance is hindered.
• However, if the 2 tasks require the PL and the VSS separately then performance is much less affected. Providing evidence for the 2 separate slave systems.

-Dual task studies are however, lab based and this means that they are artificial tasks which take place in artificial environments which may mean that the findings of such studies lack ecological validity and don’t comprehensively reflect how we process information in real life,
= thus questioning the applicability of the WMM theory when relying on lab-based evidence.

Question 7

A03 - KF Case Study - Shallice and Warrington

Answer 7

• The findings of Shallice and Warrington’s (1974) case study of KF supports the WMM.
• KF suffered brain damage following a motorcycle accident that damaged his short-term memory.
• KF’s impairment was mainly for verbal information - his memory for visual information (faces) was largely unaffected.
• This supports the WMM theory that there are separate STM components for visual information (VSS) and verbal information.
• However, caution must be taken when considering case studies as support for a theory as they are unique insights into one individual and therefore findings cannot be generalised to the wider population.