Working memory model

• Baddeley and Hitch

  • research suggests that STM has subdivisions
  • WMM is concerned with the part of the mind that is active when we are temporarily storing and manipulating info
  • eg: read a sentence - data is temporarily stored in passive store while reading the next sentence
• Central executive

  • control mechanism with a supervisory role to monitor incoming data
  • inhibits irrelevant data, makes decisions and allocate slave systems to tasks, switched attention
  • co ordinates the activities of the 3 subsystems in the memory
  • very limited storage, capacity and duration
• Phonological Loop

  • processes auditory info and preserves the order in which the info arrives

  subdivided into:

  • phonological store - passive store, holds words you hear
  • articulatory control system - active processor, allows maintenance rehearsal
  • capacity is believed to be 2 seconds worth of what you can say
• Visuo-spatial sketchpad

  • stores visual and spatial info - colour, position, texture, what something looks like

  divided into:

  • visual cache - passive store, which stores visual data
  • inner scribe - active processor, records the arrangement of objects in the field
  • limited capacity
• Episodic buffer

  • temporary store for info
  • integrates visual, spatial and verbal info from other stores
  • maintains sense of time sequences - recording events that are happening - time stamps
  • added in 2000 by Baddeley
  • links WM to LTM and wider cognitive processes such as perception