Working Memory Model

Question 1

Who developed the working memory model?

Answer 1

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

Question 2

Working memory model

Answer 2

Short term memory is spilt into stores
Central executive
Episodic buffer- added in 2000
Phonological loop
Visuo spatial sketchpad

Question 3

What do the components on the WMM do?

Answer 3

Central executive- directs attention to tasks and determines how the three slave systems are allocated these tasks
Episodic buffer- added in 2000, general store with no capacity that integrates info from other components and maintains time sequencing, sends info to LTM
Phonological loop- deals with auditory info. Articulately Process (inner voice) and Primary Acoustic store (inner ear)
Visuo-spatial Sketchpad- inner eye that transfers verbal to visual
can manipulate and imagine visual and spatial (physical relationship between things) info

Question 4

How has the WMM mainly been studied?

Answer 4

Dual tasks
Assuming that each component has a limited capacity, the performance of both tasks is worse when two tasks make use of the same component.
e.g. patting head and rubbing stomach is difficult

Question 5

Hitch and Baddeley (1976)

Answer 5

Asked participants to perform a verbal reasoning task while simultaneously holding a sequence of digits in memory. Performance on the reasoning task was only slightly slowed as the digit sequence increased, supporting the idea that working memory has separate components for different types of tasks (verbal reasoning and digit storage).

Question 6

Activity in the CE should be increased when dual tasks are being performed rather than single.
Bunge (2000)

Answer 6

Used fMRI scans to see which parts of the brain are most active when pps. carried out two tasks
Same areas active during dual and single task condition but there was significantly more activation in the dual task condition