Working Memory Model Flashcards
Central executive
The central executive is a crucial component of the working memory model that plays a vital role in controlling and coordinating cognitive processes. It acts as the boss of the working memory system allocating information to the different slave systems. The central executive is likely to be linked with the frontal lobes of the brain.
Central executive support
One study that supports, the existence of the central executive is the research conducted by Miyake et al 2000. They used a task called the dual task paradigm to investigate the relationship between working memory and executive functions. The result showed that tasks requiring executive control, such a switching between tasks and inhibiting irrelevant information was strongly correlated with working memory performance. This study provides empirical evidence for the involvement of the central executive in working memory and executive functions
Phonological store
The phonological store is an important component of the phonological loop. In working memory. It is responsible for temporarily storing auditory information, such as sound, or words in a phonological, (inner ear) or auditory (inner voice) form, which allows for subvocal repetition, leading to maintenance rehearsal
Phonological store support
Support is the research conducted by baddeley 2003 which suggests that participants in tests get confused by list of items that sound similar but not by items with similar meaning. This suggest that the phonological loop code acoustically and can get overloaded. He found that similar signing letters e.g. BGTP I’m not recalled as well as dissimilar sounding letters. WXKR
Vizio spatial sketchpad
Physio spatial sketchpad is a slave system that contemporarily store visual and spatial information when required. It has a limited capacity of about three or four objects..
Criticism of Visio spatial
However, the idea of the slave system has been criticised by Lieberman 1980 who pointed out that blind people have spatial memory due to the fact that they can remember where things are and not bump into things even though they have never had any visual information. This suggest that the vSSP should have two different components visual memory and spatial memory
Episodic buffer
The episodic buffer was added to the model in the year 2000 to explain how patients with amnesia could repeat more details in a story. Then they could keep in their phonological loop. The episodic buffer is a temporary storage system that is able to combine information from the phonological loop, VSSP long-term memory, or from perceptual input into a coherent episode
Episodic buffer support
This is supported by Alkhalifa 2009 where they found that patients with impaired long-term memory had a short-term memory capacity of 25 items which exceeds that of the VSSP and phonological loop. Therefore this supports the idea that the episodic buffer holds items in working memory until recalled.
KF
A study that supports the working model is the KF case study. KF suffered brain damage from a motorcycle incident, which then damaged his short-term memory. The after effects of this were that KF struggled to process verbal information that his visual memory was unaffected. Therefore, this shows that the visual information from his visual spatial sketchpad is process separately from the verbal information from the phonological loop
Working memory model can be seen as a battle memory than the multicore model as it replaces short-term memory with something more complicated. It fits in with evidence from brain scans and cases like KF.
