Working Memory Model

• What are the four components of the Working Memory Model?

  Central Executive, Phonological Loop, Visuospatial Sketchpad, Episodic Buffer
• What is the main purpose of the CE?

  • thrive and survive
  • in charge if coordinating 'slave systems'
  • involved in attention and higher mental processes
• What is the main purpose of the Phonological loop?

  • how we process info related to sound
  • articulatory process - repeats words in a loop to prevent decaying
• What is the main purpose of the Visuospatial Sketchpad?

  • process visual info e.g. shape, colour
  • plan spatial movements like working ones way through a complex building
• What is the main purpose of the Episodic Buffer?


  added in 2001 and communicates with both long-term memory and the components of working memory
• The CE has a 'supervisory' role - monitors incoming data, focuses and divides our limited attention and allocates subsystems to tasks
• The CE has a very limited processing capacity and does not store much info
• The phonological loop deals with auditory info and preserves the order in which info arrives
• The phonological loop is subdivided into:

  • phonological store - stores words you hear
  • articulatory process - allows maintenance rehearsal (capacity of this 'loop' is believed to be 2 seconds worth of what you can say)
• The Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad stores visual and/or spatial info when required and has limited capacity according to Baddeley (2003) is about 3 or 4 items
• Robert Logie (1995) subdivided VSS into visual cache and inner scribe
• The Episodic Buffer was added in 2000 and is a temporary store for information, integrating the visual, spatial, and verbal info processed by other stores and maintaining a sense of time sequencing
• EB is is seen as storage component of CE and has limited capacity of about 4 chunks Baddeley (2012) - links working memory to LTM and wider cognitive processes such as perception