Working memory model AO3

Question 1

lack of clarity over the nature of the central executive

Answer 1

• the central executive may be made of several sub-components or even be part of a larger component
• lack of explanation for each component of the WMM
• draws doubts about the accuracy
• Baddeley 2003 central executive is the most important but the least understood component of the working memory
• central executive needs to be more clearly specified

Question 2

shallice and Warrington 1970

Answer 2

• a case study of patient KF
• after his brain injury, KF had poor STM ability for auditory info but could process visual information normally
• his immediate recall of letters and digits was better when he read them (visual) than when they were read to him (acoustic)
• KF’s phonological loop was damaged but his visuospatial sketchpad was intact
• findings strongly support the existence of visual and acoustic memory stores

Question 3

an implication for shallice and Warrington’s study

Answer 3

• unclear whether KF had other cognitive impairments which might have affected his performance on memory tasks
• his injury was caused by a motorcycle accident
• trauma involved may have affected his cognitive performance quite apart from any brain injury
• this challenges evidence that comes from clinical studies of people with brain injuries that may have affected many different systems

Question 4

dual-task performance

Answer 4

• strength is that studies of the dual task performance support the separate existence of the visuo spatial sketchpad
• baddeley and hitch 1975 conducted an experiment in which ppts were asked to perform 2 tasks at the same time
• digit span task is required them to repeat a list of numbers and a verbal reasoning task which required them to answers true or false to various questions
• results as the number of digits increased in the digit span tasks
• ppts took longer to answer the reasoning questions
• didn’t make any more errors in the verbal reasoning take as the number of digits increased
• the verbal reasoning tasks made use of the central executive and the digit span task made use of the phonological loop