Working memory model Flashcards
Who proposed the working memory model?
Baddeley & Hitch
What is the WMM?
- A representation of the STM (how it is organised & how it functions)
- model suggest the STM is a dynamic processor of different types of information
- consist of 4 main components
What is the role of the central executive?
‘supervisory role’
- monitors incoming data
- focuses & divides our limited attention
- makes decisions and delegates tasks to 3 slave systems
What is the capacity & code of the central executive?
- limited capacity
- does not store information so no duration or code
What is the role of the phonological loop?
- ‘slave system’
- Temporary store that holds/deals with auditory/sound information
What are the roles of the two subdivisions of the phonological loop?
- Phonological store (inner ear) - stores words you hear
- Articulatory process (inner voice) - allows for maintenance rehearsal
What is the capacity & code of the phonological loop?
- limited capacity
- code = acoustic
What is the role of the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
- ‘slave system’
- temporary store that holds visual/spatial information
What are the roles of the two subdivisions of the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
subdivided by Logie
- Visual cache- stores visual information e.g. shapes, colours
- inner scribe- records arrangements of objects in the visual filed
What is the capacity of the Visuo-spatial sketchpad?
- limited capacity (3 or 4 objects)
What is the episodic buffer?
- ‘slave system’
- added as model by Baddeley(2000)
- temporary store for information that integrates information from the other stores e.g. visual spatial & verbal information
- seen as a storage component of the central executive
- links the WMM with the LTM
What is the capacity of the episodic buffer?
limited capacity (about 4 chunks)
What is a strength of the working memory model?
- support from Shallice & Warrington’s case study of patient KF who had amnesia
- after brain injury KF had poor STM ability for auditory info but could process visual info normally
- e.g. recall of letters & digits better when he read them than when they were read out loud to him
- KF’s phonological loop damaged but visuo-spatial sketchpad intact
- supports existence of separate visual & acoustic stores
What is another strength of the working memory model?
- support from studies of dual task performance
- Baddeley et al participants carried out a visual & verbal task at same time (dual task)
- performance on each was similar to when the task were carried out separately
- when both tasks were visual or both verbal> performance declined
- Because both visual tasks compete for the same slave subsystem (VSS)
- shows there must be a separate slave system that processes visual input (VSS) & one for verbal (PL)
What is a counterpoint to dual task performance support?
- use artificial tasks that do not represent the task we perform in everyday lives e.g. recalling random sequences of letters
- Also carried out in lab conditions > demand characteristics
What is a limitation of the working memory model?
- lack of clarity over nature of the CE
- central executive needs to be more clearly specified than just simply ‘attention’
- some psychologists believe CE may consist of separate subcomponents
- this means CE is an unsatisfactory component & challenges integrity of the WMM
