working memory model

• working memory model 


  representation of short term memory
• central executive 


  • supervisory role that coordinates the activities of the three subsystems
  • divides our limited attention - allocating processing recourses to those activities
  • limited capacity + does not store information
  • can process information from any sensory modality
• phonological loop


  • deals with auditory information (i.e. coding is acoustic) and preserves the order in which the information arrives
  • includes both written and verbal information
  • subdivided into the phonological store and the articulatory loop
• phonological store 


  stores the words you hear
• articulatory process 


  • allows maintenance rehearsal (repeating sounds or words in a ‘loop’ to keep them in working memory while they are needed)
  • the capacity of this ‘loop’ is believed to be two seconds worth of what you can say
• visual-spatial sketchpad 


  • processes visual and spatial information in a mental space often called our ‘inner eye’
  • limited capacity - 3 to 4 objects (baddeley 2003)
  • subdivided into visual cache and inner scribe
• visual cache


  stores visual data
• inner scribe 


  records the arrangement of objects in the visual field
• episodic buffer 


  • temporary store for information that brings other material from the other subsystems (visual, spatial and verbal) into a single memory
  • maintaining a sense of time sequencing - recording events (episodes) that are happening
  • can be seen as a storage component of the central executive
  • limited capacity - 4 chunks (baddeley 2012)
  • links working memory to LTM and wider cognitive processes such as perception