Working Memory Model Flashcards
Who developed the WMM and when?
Baddeley and Hitch 1974
What memory store is the WMM of?
STM
Name the parts of the WMM
Central executive, Visuo-spatial sketchpad, Phonological Loop, episodic buffer.
What does the central executive do?
Allocates slave systems to tasks, monitors incoming data, and directs attention. It has a limited storage capacity.
What does the phonological loop consist of?
The phonological store and articulatory process.
What does the phonological loop do?
Deals with auditory information and preserves the order in which the information arrives.
What is stored in the phonological store?
the words you hear.
What does the articulatory process do?
allows maintenance rehearsal (repeating sounds to keep them in the working memory while they are needed)
What does the visuo-spatial sketchpad do?
Stores visual and spatial information when required.
What was Logie (1995)’s subdivision of the VSS?
Subdivided the VSS into the visual cache which stores visual data, and the inner scribe which records the arrangement of objects in the visual field.
What is the Episodic Buffer?
temporary storage for information. It was added to the WMM in 2000.
What does the Episodic Buffer do?
It integrates visual, spatial, and verbal information from other stores. It maintains a sense of time sequencing- records events (episodes) that are happening. Links to LTM.
Strength of the WMM - support from clinical evidence, Shallice and Warrington 1970
studied KF with brain injury. His STM for auditory information was poor due to a damaged Phonological Loop, but he could process visual information with his Visuo- spatial sketchpad. (supports separate visual and acoustic memory stores)
Counterpoint of Shallice and Warrington’s 1970 study of KF.
KF may have had other impairments which explained poor memory performance other than the damage to the Phonological loop.
Strength of the WMM- dual-task performance studies support the Visuo- spatial sketchpad.
Baddeley et al.’s 1975 participants found it harder to carry out 2 visual tasks at the same time than to do verbal and visual tasks together. This is because both visual tasks compete for the same subsystem- there is no competition with a verbal and visual task as they are processed separately.
