working memory model Flashcards
what is the central executive
The central executive is the main part of the working memory modelit decides what the short term memory pays attention to it controls the different slave components and delegates task and priorities so decides which task should be handles first they also deal with decision making and reasoning behaviours, once tasks become automated they take up less capacity in the central executive and the central executive can be freed up to complete other tasks the central executive has little to no storage capacity.
what is the phonological loop
The phonological loop is responsible for the gathering the acoustic information and coding acoustic information it has two parts the phonological loop and the articulatory process
The phonological loop is linked to speech perception and remember the format and the order that words and information was presented it can hold up to 2 seconds worth of information whilst the articulatory process is resp9nsible for speech production and rehearsed sound the same way it was presented in order to prevent decay it can also only hold up to 2 seconds worth of speech
what is the visual spatial sketchpad
The visual spatial sketch pad is responsible for coding visual images and objects it has a limited capacity of 4-5 objects it is also split up into two parts the inner scribe which is responsible for mental representation and relation forms a mental map and the visual cache which is responsible about storing information about form and colour.
what is the episodic buffer
The episodic buffer integrates the different slave components together and allows one slave component to exchange and share information when required it also allows the stm to access the long-term memory in case any information is needed from past experience
what is the strength of the working memory model
A strength is that there is research to support that the phonological loop has a limited capacity participants were asked to do a verbal task and a reading task aloud the same time the ability was impaired when doing the same task the participants were then asked to do a verbal task and a visual task their abilities weren’t impacted this is a strength as it shows the phonological loop has a limited capacity and t cannot deal with two information sets at once because it can only deal with two seconds worth of speech thus if the information is overloaded it can lead to confusion and impairment
what is the strength
One strengths that there is neuroimaging evidence that the stm contains separate stores in a brain scan when partcipants were askefd to carry out different tasks different areas of the brain was highlighted when asked to do a verbal task the prefrontal cortex was highlighted when asked to do a visual tasl the occipital lobe was highlighted this ahows that different parts of the stm exist an the stm isn’t a unitary store as different parts of the brain are responsible for different slave components thus increasing the vaifty of the working meomory model
what is a weakness with the working memory model
One weakness is that there is no storage component for acoustic music benz discovered that wen listening to acoustic musc without words the ability when doing a task wasn’t impaired this is a weakness a listening to music is an acoustic task thus the phonological loop which has a limited capacity is responsible for the task thus since it has a limited capacity we would expect the ability to be impaired as the storage component will be overwritten thus as this is not the case there must be a separate store for acoustic music unaccounted for thus the explanation is incomplete
