Memory: Working Memory Model

Question 1

What is the working memory model?

Answer 1

an explanation of how STM is organised and how it functions (concerned with the part of the mind that is active when we temporarily store and manipulate information)

Question 2

What is important about STM’s function?

Answer 2

it has storage AND processing

Question 3

What are the four components of WMM?

Answer 3

• central executive
• phonological loop
• visuospatial sketchpad
• episodic buffer

Question 4

What is the central executive and what does it do?

Answer 4

• the “boss” of the working memory model
• it is an attentional process that monitors incoming data, makes decisions and delegates tasks to the slave system (it takes in information from the senses and processes the information by sending it to the relevant slave systems)

Question 5

What are the slave systems the central executive allocates information to?

Answer 5

• phonological loop
• visuospatial sketchpad
• episodic buffer
  (the other three stores)

Question 6

What is the capacity and coding of the central executive?

Answer 6

capacity: limited (3-4 chunks)
coding: modality free (can process information from all the senses)

Question 7

What is the phonological loop and what is it made up of?

Answer 7

• it processes auditory information and allows us to both produce and understand speech
• it is made of the phonological store and the articulatory process

Question 8

What is the phonological store?

Answer 8

• the inner ear that processes incoming auditory information (sounds)
• this is used for speech perception (understanding speech)

Question 9

What is the articulatory process?

Answer 9

• the inner voice
• used for speech production (to talk)
• information can be kept here by repeating it until we need to say them

Question 10

What is the capacity and coding of the phonological loop?

Answer 10

capacity: limited (2 seconds worth of information)
coding: acoustic

Question 11

What is the visuospatial sketchpad?

Answer 11

• stores visual and spatial information (inner eye)
• subdivided into the visual cache and the inner scribe

Question 12

What is the visual cache?

Answer 12

stores visual data (what things look like
e.g. what an orange looks like

Question 13

What is the inner scribe?

Answer 13

records the spatial arrangement of objects in the visual field (where things are located)
e.g. where the orange is

Question 14

What is the capacity and coding of the visuospatial sketchpad?

Answer 14

capacity: limited (3-4 items)
coding: visually

Question 15

What is the episodic buffer?

Answer 15

temporarily stores information from the other subsystems (phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad) and integrates the information, while maintaining a sense of time sequencing, to produce a full episode of the event
(can be seen as the storage componene of the central executive)

Question 16

How does the episodic buffer link with the LTM?

Answer 16

• it integrates information from the LTM
• information must go through the episodic buffer to from STM to LTM

Question 17

What is the capacity and coding of the episodic buffer?

Answer 17

capacity: limited (3-4 chunks)
coding: modality free

Question 18

Why is the capacity of all the components of STM limited?

Answer 18

the STM as a whole has a limited capacity

Question 19

What are we evaluating?

Answer 19

whether or not our STM works in the way the working memory model suggests it does

Question 20

Support for WMM: Baddeley and Hitch (1975)

Answer 20

• research support
• participants who were asked to perform two tasks simultaneously that use the same component found it very difficult (e.g. saying random words while silently reading something both use the phonological loop)
• participants who were asked to perform tasks involving different components found it easy (e.g. speaking while tracking a moving object uses the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad)
• this suggests the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad are separate components
• ext: it also suggests that the components have a limited capacity: a single component does not have the capacity to cope with two tasks, therefore performance is affected

Question 21

Support for WMM: Shallice and Warrington’s case study on KF

Answer 21

• research support
• after KF suffered brain damage, his STM was impaired
• he could not process verbal information but could process visual information
• this suggested that his phonological loop was damaged but his visuo-spatial sketchpad was intact
• this suggests that the those two components are separate, supporting the model
• count: however, the case study was highly specific, therefore it is difficult to generalise the conclusions to everyone. this means that we cannot be sure the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad is separate for everyone else

Question 22

Weakness of WMM: model is too simplistic and vague

Answer 22

• there is a lack of clarity over the central executive
• the model does not explain what the central executive really is, other than being involved with attention
• therefore we do not truly know how the central executive works as it is not explained well enough
• ext: a further disadvantage is that it is difficult to design tasks to study the central executive and so therefore we may never know what it truly is. additionally, because we cannot see or directly measure memory as a whole, it is difficult to study, and so we do not know for sure how our STM works

Question 23

Weakness of WMM: Berz (1995) - musical memory

Answer 23

• Berz found that we can listen to music without it impairing performance on other acoustic tasks
• for example, a soloist is able to perform on the piano while simultaneously listening to the accompanying orchestra
• this challenges the WMM, as according to the model, we shouldn’t be able to do two acoustic/auditory tasks at the same time, as the phonological loop has a limited capacity and would be overwhelmed
• this decreases the validity of the WMM
• ext: it also suggests that the WMM is too simple, as it cannot account for exceptions such as these