the working memory model

Question 1

what is the WMM? (baddeley and hitch, 1974)

Answer 1

• an explanation of how STM is organised and how it functions
• about the mental space active when we are temporarily storing and manipulating information

Question 2

what are the four main components of the WMM?

Answer 2

1. central executive
2. phonological loop
3. visuo-spatial sketchpad
4. episodic buffer

Question 3

what is the central executive and what does it do? (CE)

Answer 3

• supervisory role
• monitors incoming data
• focuses and divides our limited attention
• allocates subsystems to tasks

Question 4

what is the capacity of the CE?

Answer 4

• very limited processing capacity
• does not store information

Question 5

what is the role of the phonological loop? (PL)

Answer 5

• deals with auditory information
• preserves the order in which the information arrives

Question 6

what type of coding does the PL have?

Answer 6

acoustic

Question 7

what are the subdivisions of the PL?

Answer 7

• phonological store: stores the words you hear
• articulatory process: allows maintenance rehearsal

Question 8

what is maintenance rehearsal in the PL?

Answer 8

repeating sounds or words in a loop to keep them in working memory while they are needed

Question 9

what is the capacity of maintenance rehearsal believed to be? (PL)

Answer 9

two seconds worth of what you can say

Question 10

what is the role of the visuo-spatial sketchpad? (VSS)

Answer 10

to store visual and / or spatial information when required

Question 11

what is the capacity of the VSS?

Answer 11

• limited capacity
• 3 to 4 objects (baddeley 2003)

Question 12

what did logie (1995) subdivide the VSS into?

Answer 12

• visual cache: stores visual data
• inner scribe: records the arrangement of objects in the visual field

Question 13

what is the episodic buffer? (EB)

Answer 13

• added by baddeley (2000)
• temporary store for information
• can be seen as the storage component of the CE

Question 14

what is the role of the EB?

Answer 14

• to maintain a sense of time sequencing ie. recording events that are happening
• to integrate the visual, spatial and verbal information processed by other stores
• to link WM to LTM and wider cognitive processes eg. perception

Question 15

what is the capacity of the EB?

Answer 15

• limited capacity
• about 4 chunks (baddeley 2012)

Question 16

evaluation: clinical evidence (shallice and warrington 1970)

Answer 16

• case study of patient KF
• after brain injury, KF had poor STM ability for auditory info but could process visual info normally
• eg. immediate recall of letters & digits was better when he read them (visual) than when they were read to him (acoustic)
• ie. KF’s PL was damaged but his VSS was intact
• this strongly supports the existence of separate visual and acoustic memory stores

Question 17

evaluation: lack of controlled variables in case studies (KF)

Answer 17

• unclear if KF had cognitive impairments other than damage to PL which affected performance on memory tasks
• eg. injury was caused by a motorcycle accident; trauma involved may have affected his cognitive performance apart from any brain injury
• this challenges evidence from clinical studies of people with brain injuries that may have affected many different systems

Question 18

evaluation: dual-task performance supports the existence of the VSS (baddeley et al. 1975)

Answer 18

• ps carried out a visual and verbal task at the same time (dual task)
• performance on each was similar to when they carried out the tasks separately
• when both tasks were visual or both were verbal, performance on both declined substantially
• this is because both visual tasks compete for the same subsystem (VSS), but there is no competition when performing a verbal and a visual task together
• therfore, there must be a separate subsystem (VSS) that processes visual input, and another one for verbal processing (PL)

Question 19

evaluation: lack of clarity of the nature of the CE

Answer 19

• baddeley (2003): ‘the CE is the most important but the least understood component of WM’
• CE needs to be more clearly specified than just simply being ‘attention’
• eg. some psychologists believe the CE may consist of separate subcomponents
• this means the CE is an unsatisfactory component, which challenges the integrity of the WMM

Question 20

evaluation: validity issues of dual-task studies

Answer 20

• they use tasks that are unlike the tasks we perform in our everyday lives (eg. identifying the correct orders of letters such as A and B, recalling random sequences of letters)
• carried out in highly-controlled lab conditions (eg. where presentation of stimuli is precisely timed)
• therefore, stimuli have low mundane realism
• ps may be subject to demand characteristics