WMM Slave Systems Flashcards
What is the Central Executive?
- coordinates the activities of the 3 slave systems.
- monitors incoming data from the senses, makes decisions as to which data should be attended to and then allocates different tasks to the relevant slave-systems.
central executive coding
modality free (codes in all sensory forms)
What is the Visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSS)?
- deals with temporary storage of visual and spatial information
- essentially holds static images and manipulates them
- sub-divided into a visual cache and inner scribe
central executive capacity
very limited, cannot attend to too many things at once
visual information example
what things look like, such as the shape and size of letters in a word
spatial information
the relationship between objects
VSS capacity
3-4 items
VSS coding
relies on a visual code in terms of shape, size and colour
visual cache
stores information about visual items i.e. shape and colour
inner scribe
deals with spatial relations and records the arrangement of obiects in the visual field
What is the phonological loop?
- deals with auditory/sound information or deals with both written and spoken material
- subdivided into the phonological store (inner ear) and the articulatory process (inner voice)
- the phonological store stores the words you hear (in speech form)
- the articulatory process allows for maintenance rehearsal
- as a limited capacity / the capacity of the loop is what can be said in 2 seconds
phonological store
holds words that have recently been heard, like an ‘inner ear’
phonological store duration
2 seconds
articulatory process
allows maintenance rehearsal
- words or sounds are silently repeated in a ‘loop’ to keep them in working memory while they are needed, such as when trying to remember a telephone number by sub-vocally repeating it over and over, like an ‘inner voice’.
articulatory process capacity
2 seconds worth of what you can say before the trace fades away
