WMM Flashcards
who made the wmm
baddeley and hitch
what does the wmm state
describes STM as made of 4 components
what are the 4 components of the wmm
- central executive
- phonological loop
- visuospatial sketchpad
- episodic buffer
central executive
- controls processing in wmm
- directs attention to tasks
- decision making, problem solving, determines how slave systems are allocated
- no capacity, info encoded from senses
phonological loop
- auditory info
- 2 second capacity
- repeats and rehearses info
- divided into articulatory control and phonological store
articulatory control
subvocal rehearsal (what we are about to say)
phonological store
repeats and rehearses info that we hear
visuospatial sketchpad
- temporarily stores and manipulates verbal and spatial info
- divided into visual cache and inner scribe (Logie)
visual cache
stores info about form and colour
inner scribe
contains spatial and movement info
episodic buffer
- added by baddeley in 2000
- general backup store that processes all info from WMM and integrates it into the LTM
word-length effect
lists of short words easier to recall than long words
phonological similarity effect
similar sounding words more difficult to recall than dissimilar words
- shows that phonological store encodes acoustically
dual task performance
you can perform 2 tasks at once but they must use different processing stores otherwise cognitive overload occurs
K.F. case study support
victim of a motorbike accident who could still add memories to LTM even though his STM was so damaged he couldn’t repeat back more than 2 digits
supports WMM claim that separate short-term stores manage short-term phonological and visual memories
however case studies are unique - can’t replicate, low generalisability
is the WMM reductionist
provides more deatil on STM for example the fact that it is split into 4 components based around the senses, but still simplistic and vague - e.g. it’s unclear what the central executive is and what it’s exact role is in attention
Baddeley et al 1975
supports the WMM
when ppts performed a visual and verbal task (dual-task) performance on each was no worse than when carried out separately , when they carried out two visual tasks at once performance declined
- shows there must be separate slave subsystems that process visual and verbal inputs
