Working Memory Model

• Who invented the WMM and when?

  Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
• What are the components of the WMM?

  central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer.
• What is the role of the Central Executive (CE)?

  known as the 'boss' of the WMM, it decides which subsystem to send information to
• What is the coding of the CE?

  multi modality store
• What is the capacity of the CE?


  no capacity
• What is the role of the phonological loop (PL)?

  dedicated to speech based information (words that we hear or read)
• What are the two components of the PL?

  Phonological store, Articulatory Process
• What does the Phonological store do in the PL?


  stores the words you hear
• What does the Articulatory Process do in the PL?

  allows maintenance rehearsal by repeating words to keep them in memory
• What is the coding of the PL?

  acoustic
• What is the capacity of the PL?

  whatever can be said in 2 seconds
• What is the role of the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad (VSS)?

  dedicated to visual and spatial information
• What are the two components of the VSS?

  Visual cache, Inner Scribe
• What does the Visual Cache do in the VSS?


  is a passive store for visual information such as what things look like
• What does the inner scribe do in the VSS?

  is an active store of visual information and relays where one thing is in relation to another
• What is the coding of the VSS?

  visual
• What is the capacity of the VSS?

  4 items
• What is the role of the Episodic Buffer?

  integrates information from the CE, VSS, PL + LTM and draws upon all of them when reading
• What are the features of the episodic buffer?

  general temporary store and maintains a sense of time sequencing
• What is the coding of the Episodic Buffer?

  multimodal
• What is the capacity of the Episodic Buffer?

  limited
• What is the evaluation for the CE?


  :( vague about how it works

  
  

  :) Baddeley accepted this criticism and saw it as an opportunity for future research
• What additional research evidence is there for the CE?

  Miyake et al. (2000) suggested the CE has 3 features:

  • Inhibition -> think before you speak (stroop experiment)
  • Updating -> knowing what you've done and what you need to do next
  • Shifting -> switching from one task to another
• What is the evaluation for the PL?

  :) Research evidence for duration - Baddeley et al. (1975), Word Length Effect

  PROCEDURE: -> list 1 (short words), list 2 (long words), should be able to remember 7 words from each list -> suggested by Jacobs

  FINDINGS: participants remember more short words

  CONCLUSION: capacity is what can be said in 2 seconds
• What is the evaluation for the VSS?

  :) research evidence - Baddeley et al (1975), Dual performance task

  • :) now replaced by brain scanning evidence
  • :( lab setting -> artificial task -> lacks mundane realism
• Describe the Dual performance task for VSS

  Baddeley et al (1975).

  PROCEDURE: condition 1 (two visual tasks), condition 2 (one visual, one verbal)

  FINDINGS: perform better when two tasks are different

  CONCLUSION: two visual tasks compete for the same subsystem, whereas diff tasks use diff subsystems (PL + VSS) so no competition
• What is the evaluation for the Episodic Buffer?

  :) Research Evidence - Prabhakaren et al (2000), brain scanning evidence

  PROCEDURE: condition 1 ( spatial + verbal info separate), condition 2 (spatial + verbal info integrated)

  FINDINGS: condition 1 activated posterior regions of brain whereas condition 2 activated prefrontal cortex

  CONCLUSION: episodic buffer exists and is located in prefrontal cortex