the working memory model

• who was the working memory model devised by and when?

  Baddeley and Hitch, 1974
• what is the wmm?

  it's a model of stm which sees the store as an active processor, it's a limited capacity stm store and stores info for a short period of time while performing mental operations on them, it's important for reasoning, problem solving and comprehension.
• what are the stages of the wmm?

  central executive -> phonological loop (articulatory control process and phonological store) or episodic buffer (added in 2000) or visuo-spatial sketchpad -> ltm
• what do all the wmm stages have in common?

  all have limited capacity
• what is the central executive in the wmm?

  it's responsible for directing attention, problem solving, decision making and memory retrieval. Controls info from 3 ‘slave’ stores
• what do the three 'slave' stores do in the wmm?

  • phonological loop: split into 2; articulatory control process- ‘inner voice’ which allows acoustically coded info to be stored briefly, phonological store- ‘inner ear’ holds auditory speech and allows subvocal repetition.
  • visuo-spatial sketchpad: temporary store of visual and spatial info- allows mental images to be manipulated.
  • episodic buffer: used as an additional and temp store to hold and combine info from CE, PL, VSS, it integrates info for the ltm to help in short term working memory.
• what are some predictions with the wmm?

  1. if 2 tasks use different components, they can be completed successfully in unison, e.g. driving and listening to music,
  2. if 2 tasks use the same component, they cannot be performed successfully in unison, e.g. reading silently and listening to music lyrics
• what did Robbins research and find out in 1996?

  he made 20 participants memorise 16 chess positions in 10 seconds (vss) repeated 20x while memorising either; 4 numbers on a keyboard (vss) or say 'the the the' in your head in time with a metronome (pl),

  concluded that recall with pl was good, while vss task was bad- using different stores don't intefere with each other.
• research evidence for the central executive:

  Baddeley, 1996; participants found it difficult to generate lists of random numbers while either pressing numbers or letters on a keyboard. The 2 tasks competing for the central executive resources supports the idea that is has limited capacity
• research evidence for the visual spatial sketchpad:

  Baddeley, 1993; participants found it difficult to track a moving point of light and describe angles in the hollow letters 'F' and 'E', as both involve the VSS. Others had little difficulty in tracking the light while performing a verbal task as they involve separate components, the VSS and PL
• research evidence for the phonological loop:

  Baddeley et al, 1975; reported on word-length effect, where the participants recalled more short words in serial order than longer words, supporting the idea that the PL's capacity is set by how long it takes to say the words, rather than the actual number of words
• research evidence for the episodic buffer:

  Prabhakaran et al, 2000; used fMRI to find greater right-frontal brain activation for combined verbal and spatial info, but greater posterior activation for non-combined info, providing biological evidence for an EB that allows temporary storage of info
• give 2 strengths of the wmm:

  1. gives a much more detailed explanation of stm than the msm. It sees memory as active rather than passive.
  2. it explains how cognitive processes interact; outlining how we can do 2 tasks at once if using different components- support from experimental research= dual task experiments (Robbins), case study= K.F. fell off motorbike that damaged his stm. KF struggled to process verbal information but his visual memory  was unaffected. This shows that visual info is processed separately from verbal info
• what is the biological evidence for the wmm?

  CE activates the front of the brain (decision making), PL and VSS in the posterior of the brain.

  fMRI or PET scans show brain activation in the left hemisphere with verbal tasks, and in the right hemisphere with spatial tasks
• give 3 weaknesses of the wmm:

  1. function of the CE is rather vague and unclear; very little research into it even though it's the component in charge,
  2. it's difficult to prove and/or disprove,
  3. experiments are complicated, artificial and lack mundane realism which weakens the evidence into the model