Working Memory Model, and Evaluations

Question 1

What are the components of the WMM? What do they each do?

Answer 1

1) The central executive - a key component and can be described as attention. It has a limited capacity and controls ‘slave’ sytems (2 through 4) that also have limited capacity,
2) The phonological loop - holds speech-based information, made up of a phonological store (the inner ear) and an articulatory process (the inner voice, which rehearses information by repeating it),
3) The Visuo-spatial sketchpad - deals with the temporary storage of visual and spatial information,
4) The episodic buffer - briefly stores information from the other subsystems and integrates it together, along with information from LTM, to make complete scenes or ‘episodes’.

Question 2

Who was KF? What problem did he have?

Answer 2

• A brain damaged patient who had impaired STM,
• Had problem with immediate recall of words presented verbally, but not with visual information.

Question 3

What did this problem suggest?

Answer 3

• That KF had an impaired articulatory loop but an intact visuo-spatial sketchpad; providing evidence for the working-memory model’s view of STM.

Question 4

Gathercole and Baddeley (1993), method

Answer 4

• Participants split into two groups, all participants had to carry out a task where they had to follow a moving spot of light, this would use the visuo-spatial sketchpad,
• At the same time, one group of participants had to describe the angles on a letter, involving the visuo-spatial sketchpad,
• The other group of participants had to do a verbal task when following the light,

Question 5

Gathercole and Baddeley (1993), findings

Answer 5

• Found that performance was much better in the participants doing tasks which used separate systems.

Question 6

What are some criticisms of the WMM?

Answer 6

1) They think that Baddeley and Hitch’s idea of a central executive is simplistic and vague; their model doesn’t explain exactly what the central executive is, apart from being involved in attention. It is difficult to design tasks to test the central executive,
2) Model only explains how information is dealt with in the STM, doesn’t explain how information is transferred to the LTM,
3) Much of the research in support has been laboratory studies; reducing ecological validity.