the working memory model

Question 1

what is the role of the central executive?

Answer 1

• responsible for coordinating the other slave units
• processess information from any of the senses and has minimal storage capacity
• problem solving and decision making

Question 2

what are the three main areas that the central executive is involved in?

Answer 2

• focus of attention
• inhibition
• shifting attention

Question 3

what is the role of the phonological loop?

Answer 3

• deals with auditory information, especially recall of words in the correct order
• 2 sec capacity with acoustic encoding

Question 4

what are the two parts of the phonological loop and what do they do?

Answer 4

• phonological store = stores audible material
• articulatory control system = rehearses information so prevents forgetting by decay via the maintenance rehearsal

Question 5

what is the role of the visuospatial sketchpad?

Answer 5

• capacity of 3/4 objects
• stores visual information and considers spatial arrangement of shapes
• can recreate images based on something seen in real time or in the past

Question 6

why does the dual task paradigm happen?

Answer 6

• the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad are supposed to work together but if two sources of information that are processed by the same slave system then they get overloaded

Question 7

how does the case of KF link to the working memory model?

Answer 7

• KF was in a motorcycle accident and it caused damage to his left occipital lobe
• STM was damaged but LTM remained the same
• remembered words better if presented visually
• impairment was mainly verbal not visual suggesting two different stores

Question 8

what is the study of Schumann-Hengsteler that shows that visual and verbal information are processed seperately?

Answer 8

• two different sources of inference (visual of tappng items on a map and sound where listening to irrelevant speech)
• carried out mathmatical tasks and there was interference tasks
• only the speech interferred with the task

Question 9

what are the three different applications that come from the working memory model?

Answer 9

• patients with alzheimers have shown decreased central executive function
• education of how to make learners better
• help with strategies for dyslexia

Question 10

what was the study of baddeley that showed the importance of the central executive?

Answer 10

• dual task experiments in young, elderly and alzheimers patients
• verbal and visual tasks either sepeartely or together
• alzheimers group didnt differ significantly until trying to do them together

Question 11

why is the working memory model better than the multi store model + CA?

Answer 11

• it is a more comprehensive model which splits the short term memory into further stores
• however still doesnt investigate in depth about LTM

Question 12

what are the issues with the central executive’s role in this explanation?

Answer 12

• there hasnt been much research in this area so we dont know how it works

Question 13

how can case studies of brain damaged patients be used as evaluation?

Answer 13

• case studies take an idiographic approach and therefore harder to generalise the findings

Question 14

how can PET scans being used in research be used in evaluation?

Answer 14

• objective and produce quantitative data
• high validity

Question 15

what is the study of Leiberman that criticises the working memory model?

Answer 15

-points out that blind people have excellent spatial awareness although they have never recieved visual information
- so the VSS should be separated into two different component one for spatial and one for visual

Question 16

why is it hard to effectively research the central executive?

Answer 16

• no direct test for its functioning
• any test also affects the slave systems so we cant investigate the CE alone
• lowers the credibility of the explanation