working memory model

• central executive

  controls what needs to be paid attention to and connecting knowledge to LTM
• visuospatial sketchpad (VSS)

  holds information that we see and used to manipulate objects in our minds like shapes and colours (capacity = 3-4 objects)
• what are the 2 stores in the VSS?

  visual cache and inner scribe
• visual cache

  stores information about form and colour
• inner scribe

  records arrangement of objects in the visual field allowing rehearsal of visual/spatial information to maintain it in visual cache
• phonological loop (PL)

  auditory information - capacity = 2s
• what are the 2 stores of the phonological loop?

  phonological store and articulatory process
• phonological store

  stores auditory information = what you hear
• articulatory process

  allows maintenance rehearsal and it is internal speech (sub-vocalisation e.g: repeating a phone number to yourself whilst searching for a pen to write it)
• what is episodic buffer

  combines visual and auditory information to form an episode
• strength

  • evidence from brain damaged patients supports idea of separate STM stores
  • shallice and warrington (1974) - KF suffered STM impairment after motorbiking accident. KF had a digit span of 1 = impairment of his phonological store, but visual memory intact
  • WM has 2 subsystems to deal with auditory and visuospatial information separately
• weakness

  • problems with the way WM is tested using specific and isolated memory tasks
  • tasks isolate auditory or visual information to test them - everyday tasks rarely involve isolated information as memories are constantly working
  • conclusions about potential capacity + duration limitations of stores don't give a clear picture of how memory works
• strength

  • research evidence supports WMM
  • baddeley and hitch dual task study - participants did 2 visual tasks simultaneously (tracking a dot & drawing a capital F in their minds) - they struggled but when doing tracking task with auditory task = no issues
  • shows there are separate processing stores systems for visual and auditory senses
• weakness

  • research evidence
  • eslinger and damasio (1985) studied a patient, who after removal of brain tumour performed well on reasoning tasks (clicking buttons on a predictive cue) but not tasks requiring decision making (took hours to decide what meal to eat)
  • central executive is not one store but multiple smaller stores - WMM does not explain how different store interact