working memory model

• ao1-

  The working memory model developed by Baddeley and Hitch suggests that STM is made up of the central executive which first receives information and allocates roles to the 3 slave systems. It has a very limited capacity. The phonological loop process auditory information and allows for maintenance rehearsal by being made up of the articulatory process (stores words you hear) and the phonological store which holds words you hear like an inner ear. Also has a limited capacity.
• paragraph 2

  The visuo-spacial sketchpad is the next of the slave systems and is used to plan spacial tasks. Logie divided it into the visual cache (stores information in terms of it's items like form and colour) and inner scribe (stores the arrangement of objects). Baddely added the episodic buffer as a general store which combines information from other stores and sends it to LTM.
• strengths :dual task performance

  conducted by Baddeley and Hitch supported the existance of of the central executive. Task 1 uses the central executive participants were given a statement B is followed by A and shown 2 letters like AB and asked to say true or false. task 2 either used the articulatory loop like repeating the word 'the' or involved both the central executive and the articulatory loop . Task 1 was slower when task two involved both the articulatory process and the central executive. This supports WMM because the central executive is one of the components of working memory
• strength: research support

  Shallice and Warrington (1937) studied a man called KF whose short term forgetting of auditory information was greater than that of visual information so his phonological loop was damaged but his visuo- spacial sketchpad seems to be working fine. This supports the WMM because there evidence for the visuo-spacial sketchpad and the phonological loop being different stores
• weakness: evidence from case studies

  of individuals who have suffered brain damage like the study of KF . The process of brain damage is traumatic which may change behaviour itself so that a person performs worse on certain things. This is a limitation because case studies are of unique individuals so can't be generalised to the population rather than lab based studies which may be more objective
• weakness: central executive

  has not been precisely defined eg) the term processes vague and the central executive may be made up of several sub components or even be apart of larger component itself in working memory

  therefore this lack of comprehensive information for each component on WMM draws doubt about the accuracy of it's depiction on working memory