Working memory model Flashcards
What is the working-memory model?
An explanation of how STM is organised and how it functions.
What does the central executive do?
Monitors incoming data, focuses and divides our limited attention and allocates ‘slave systems’ to tasks.
What does the phonological loop do?
Deals with auditory information and preserves the order in which info arrives.
What is the phonological loop divided into?
- Phonological store
- Articulatory process
What does the phonological store do?
Stores the words you hear
What does the articulatory process do?
Allows maintenance rehearsal
What does the visuo-spatial sketchpad do?
Processes visual and spatial information in a mental space called the ‘inner eye’.
What is the visuo-spatial sketchpad divided into?
- Visual cache
- Inner scribe
What does the episodic buffer do?
Brings together material from the other subsystems into a single memory rather than single strands
One strength is that there is clinical evidence from studies. - Explain this point
- Case study: KF.
- KF had poor STM ability for sound information but could process visual information.
- Suggests his phonological loop was damaged but his VSS was intact.
- Supports existence of seperate visual/acoustic memory stores.
One strength is that there are studies of dual-task performance that support the seperate existence of the VSS. - Explain
- Baddeley’s participans carried out verbal and visual task at the same time, performance was similar to when they did them seperate.
- But when both were visual or both were verbal, performance decreased.
- Both tasks used same slave system.
- Suggests there must be a seperate slave system to process visual input.
One limitation is that there is a lack of clarity over the nature of the central executive. - Explain
- Baddeley: ‘The CE is the most important but least understood component’.
- Needs to be more specified than just being ‘attention’.
- CE is an unsatisfactory component and this challenges the integrity of the WMM.