Working Memory Model Flashcards
AO3 research to support
Research to support the WMM was conducted by shallice and warrington (1970) in patient KF who suffered from amnesia they found that KFs recall in the STM for digits was very poor when the digits were read aloud to him but recall was much better when he could visually see the digits for himself this supports the WMM because it suggests that there must be different stores in the STM one to process visual information and one to process auditory information as the PL was damaged but the VSS intact
Discussion
However critics would argue that the case study to support the WMM is flawed as it has low population validity the research was a case study of just one person patient KF who has an unusual illness involving am damage to the brain therefore it is difficult to generalise the findings to the wider population as their STMmay operate differently thus limiting the support that the research provides for the working memory model of memory
AO3 use this for scenario questions
Studies of a dual task performance support the notion that there are s preset components within the STM and that they have limited capacity e.g baddeley et al (1975) found that participants had more difficulty when permorming two visual tasks at the same time than when performing one of the visual tasks alone or one of the visual tasks with a verbal task this supports the WMM assumptions because it suggests that both visual tasks are competing for limited capacity of the same soave system (VSS) whereas when doing a verbal and visual task simultaneously they are delegated to separate slave systems and performance is not reduced as there is no competition for capacity therefore the credibility of the WMM as a model of memory is increased
