Working memory model evaluation

Question 1

Name one evaluation point

Answer 1

Dual task performance experiment conducted by Baddely and Hitch in 1976 provided the existence of the central executive
Participants were asked to perform two tasks
Task one involved the central executive and participants were given a statement - ‘A is followed by B, determine whether the following statement AB is true or false’
Task two involved either the articulatory process/loop of which participants were asked to say ‘the the the’. Task two also involved both the articulatory process/loop and the central executive - they were asked to say a digit or words
They found that task one was performed worse when task two involved both the central executive and the articulatory loop
This shows supporting evidence of the central executive and how it is an important factor in memory.

Question 2

Name a second evaluation point

Answer 2

Shallice and Warrington in the 1970s had a patient called KF who had brain damage. He struggled with auditory processing much greater than visual stimuli. His auditory processing meant he struggled with verbal material such as digits and words but not meaningful sounds such as a phone ringing. This suggests damage to the phonological loop. Another patient SC had good learning abilities but could not process or learn word pairs presented out loud. Trojani and Grossi in 1995 had a patient LH who performed better on spatial tasks than he did visual tasks (Farah et al 1988) this suggests that there are multiple stores for different processing

Question 3

Name a third evaluation point

Answer 3

There is difficulty using case studies

• brain damage patients and findings cannot be generalised to the whole population
• patients who undergo trauma may have difficulty paying attention and may under perform on tasks
• patients with brain damage may undergo changes in behaviour and perform worse on tasks

Question 4

Name a 4th evaluation point

Answer 4

There is supporting evidence for the phonological loop and articulatory loop specifically word length affecct
it is easier to remember words that are shorter than longer words
Baddely et al in 1975 argued that the phonological loop could only store words for 2 seconds
it is easier to not remember words such as association and representative but rather words such as harm and strike
however, if a person is given an articulatory supression tasks such as ‘the the the’ when a person is reading, the articulatory process is tied due to the repetitive tasks which makes it harder to remember short words rather than long words
this shows evidence of the phonological loop

Question 5

Name a final evaluation point

Answer 5

Critics argue that the central executive is vague and is similar to attention and just allocates the brain’s resources to certain tasks. Critics would rather argue that the central executive has different components to it. Eslinger and Damasio in 1985 had a patient called EVR who had their cerebral tumour removed. They performed well on reasoning and problem solving questions which showed evidence of the central executive entact but they had poor decision making and would take hours deciding what to eat and etc which showed damage to the central executive. This shows that there are several different components to the central executive rather than just one.