Working Memory Model

Question 1

What are the 4 components

Answer 1

• Central executive
• Phonological loop
• Visio-spatial sketchpad
• Episodic buffer

Question 2

Central executive

Answer 2

• It essentially monitors incoming data, and makes decisions and allocates slave systems to tasks
• It has a very limited capacity
• It decides what to pay attention to, inhibiting irrelevant information

Question 3

Phonological loop

Answer 3

• This is the inner ear, and deal with auditory information
• It consists of a phonological store, which holds words that are heard, and an articulatory loop, which allows maintenance rehearsal

Question 4

Visuo-spatial sketchpad

Answer 4

• It stores visual or spatial information when required
• It has a limited capacity
• It consists of visual cache, which stores visual data, and inner scribe, which records the arrangement of objects in the visual field

Question 5

Episodic buffer

Answer 5

• This was added in 2000 due to criticism that the model didn’t explain LTM linkage
• This is a storage component for the central executive
• It is a temporary store for information, integrating visual, spatial and verbal information being processed by other stores
• It interacts with LTM to retrieve meaning and how to carry out processes

Question 6

Research support- dual task performance (Baddeley)

Answer 6

• He had participants track a light and describe the letter F (two visual tasks) at the same time
• Participants had more much difficulty doing this than doing a visual and verbal task at the same time
• This is because both visual tasks compete for the same slave system, whereas when doing a visual and verbal task, there is no competition
• This supports the idea that different information is processed by different stores

Question 7

Evaluation of WMM

Answer 7

• Clinical evidence: support for the WMM comes from Shallice and Warrington who did a case study on a man called KF. He had poor ability for verbal information, but could process visual information normally. This suggested that his phonological loop was damaged but nothing else. This supports the existence of a separate visual and acoustic store
• Lack of clarity over the central executive: Cognitive psychologists suggest that this component of the WMM does not really explain anything. This component needs to be more clearly specified than just being simply attention. This suggests the WMM hasn’t been explained fully