Working Memory model

Question 1

What is the working memory model (WMM)?

Answer 1

It is an explanation of short-term memory (STM) based on four components, some with storage capacity.

Question 2

What is the central executive?

Answer 2

The central executive supervises and coordinates information too and from the slave systems. It can do duel tasks (audio and visual/spatial). It also decides which pieces of information to focus on. Also deals with cognitive tasks such as mental arithmetic and problem solving. It has a very limited capacity.

Question 3

What is the episodic buffer?

Answer 3

It is a temporary store that integrates information from the other components and maintains a sense of time, so that events occur in a continuing sequence. Episodic buffer can also hold information from long term memory temporarily.

Question 4

What is the phonological loop?

Answer 4

It encodes speech and sound. It involves maintenance rehearsal (repeating words over and over again). The phonological loop is divided into two subdivision:

*The phonological store (the inner ear)
*The articulatory process (the inner voice)
Information is passed between these two stores.

Question 5

What is the Visio-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 5

It encodes visual information. It is divided into two subdivision:

• The visual cache (stores information)
• The inner scribe (spatial relations)

Question 6

What did Baddeley and Hitch develop and when?

Answer 6

The Working Memory Model (1974)

Question 7

What did the Working Memory Model propose?

Answer 7

It proposed that STM is made up of several different stores:
*At the center is the central executive (attention) It has a limited capacity and controls to ‘slave’ systems either side of it, which also have limited capacity.

• On one side you have the articulatory-phonological loop. This holds the speech-based information. It contains a phonological store (the inner ear) and an articulatory process (the inner voice).
• Next, you have the visuo-spatial sketchpad. This deals with the temporary storage of visual and spatial information.

Question 8

What did Baddeley and Hitch base there model on?

Answer 8

Results from studies that used interference tasks.

Question 9

Draw the working memory model.

Answer 9

.

Question 10

What is the articulatory loop/Articulatory control process (inner voice)?

Answer 10

Linked to speech production. It subconsciencsly rehearses words that are heard or seen (from the phonological store) by playing them on a loop. It may also store this information. It has a limited capacity.

Question 11

What is the phonological store (inner ear)?

Answer 11

Linked to speech perception. It stores information in speech-based form (i.e. spoken words) for 1-2 seconds.

Question 12

What is the visual cache?

Answer 12

The visual cache temporarily stores form and colour information.

Question 13

What is the inner scribe?

Answer 13

Stores the arrangement of objects in the visual field.

Question 14

What are the strengths of the WMM?

Answer 14

• The model was developed based on evidence from laboratory experiments, so confounding variables could be carefully controlled to produce reliable results (that can be replicated).
• Shallice and Warrington (1974) case study reported that brain-damaged patient KF could recall verbal but not visual information immediately after its presentation, which supports the WMM’s claim that separate short-term stores manage short-term phonological and visual memories.
• Practical applications: The working memory model has practical applications in fields such as education and clinical psychology. For example, it has been used to develop interventions to improve working memory capacity in children with learning difficulties.

Question 15

What are the weaknesses of the WMM?

Answer 15

• Results from laboratory experiments researching the WMM will often have low ecological validity (i.e. may not relate to real life), as tasks such as repeating ‘the the the’ are arguably not representative of our everyday activities.
• Despite providing more detail of STM than the multi-store model, the WMM has been criticised for being too simplistic and vague, e.g. it is unclear what the central executive is, or its exact role in attention.
• Oversimplification: The working memory model oversimplifies the complexity of the cognitive processes involved in working memory. For example, it does not account for the role of attention in the selection and processing of information or the role of long-term memory in the maintenance and manipulation of information.

Question 16

A03: Central executive

Answer 16

• One weakness of the working memory model is that the Central Executive is difficult to quantify. Little research has been done to understand the central executive. Does nobody know the capacity limitations of the central executive? Richardson (1984) found problems specifying the precise function of the central executive. It cannot be falsified.
• The central executive is poorly understood. Since there are only modest correlations between people on different executive functions, and since some people can lose some executive functions but keep others, it’s highly unlikely that the CE is one unitary construct.

+ The central executive is responsible for coordinating and integrating information from other subsystems of working memory, such as the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad. It has the ability to switch between different tasks and allocate attention according to the demands of the task at hand. This makes it a flexible and adaptable component of the working memory system.

Question 17

A03: Phonological loop/articulatory process

Answer 17

Baddeley’s (1975) word length effect (short words easier to recall than long). Prevention from being able to rehearse words by repeating an irrelevant sound. The word length effect was lost as articulatory suppression fills the phonological loop.

Question 18

A03: Visio spacial sketchpad

Answer 18

+ A strength of the WMM is that evidence supports the visuospatial scratch pad. Baddeley (1973). It involved holding a pointer with a moving spot of light whilst visualising the block capital letter F. Tracking and letter imagery tasks were competing for the limited resources of the visuospatial scratch pad. Whereas the tracking and verbal tasks use separate components.

• Lack of empirical support: While the VSSP is a well-known model in the field of cognitive psychology, some researchers have criticized it for lacking sufficient empirical support. Some studies have failed to replicate the model’s predictions, and some have suggested that other models may better account for spatial cognition.