Working Memory Model

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    Cards (24)

    • What is the Central Executive in the WMM?

      • makes decisions and acts as a control system
      • controls attention and switching attention to different tasks
      • retrieves processes for memories from LTM
      • co-ordinates activity
      • can deal with all sensory info
    • What are the two systems in the phonological loop?

      articulatory control system and phonological store
    • What is the visuospatial sketchpad?

      • 'inner eye'
      • manipulates visual and spatial info
      • works by either directly observing images or retrieving visuospatial info from LTM
      • helps us to visualise things
      • capacity of 3-4 objects
      • visual cache - stores visual things and inner scribe to record the arrangement of objects in visual field
    • What is the phonological store?

      • 'inner ear'
      • holds verbal information in a speech based form
      • holds sound for up to 2 secs
      • concerned with speech perception and sound of items
    • What is the articulatory control system?

      • 'inner voice'
      • maintained by subvocal repetition
      • speech production
    • What are the strengths of the WMM?

      • extremely influential and preferred in use by most cognitive psychologists
      • more plausible as it explains STM in terms of temporary storage and active processing
      • incorporates verbal rehearsal as only one process in articulatory process
    • What are the weaknesses of the WMM?

      • does not offer complete understanding of memory
      • the exact role of the central executive is not fully understood
      • Berz (1995) criticised the model for not accounting for musical memory not impairing other acoustic tasks
    • What does research suggest about the mistakes with the MSM?
      research suggests that the STM is more complicated than it first seems
    • What did Baddeley and Hitch (1974) propose?
      + new and improved model focus on STM only and suggests the store is not unitary
      + now proposed that the STM is 'working' memory store with processes taking place
      + LTM more passive store that holds previously learned memory for use by STM/ working memory
    • What is the central executive?
      + capacity: limited, but processes information from any sensory system
      + monitors information coming in from different sources
      + decides what to pay attention to and allocates tasks to different slave systems
    • What is the Phonological loop?
      + 'inner voice' which deals with auditory information
      + subdivided into articulatory control process and phonological store
      + articulatory control process allows maintenance rehearsal (repeating words in head 'inner voice')
      + phonological store holds words that are heard
      + AL has a capacity of 2 seconds of what you can say
    • What is the episodic buffer?
      + binds and integrates information from all other components and sends information to the LTM store
      + Baddeley (2000) added this as he needed a more general store
      + slave systems deal with specific types of information
      + adds an extra storage system with limited capacity
      + integrates information from all areas
      + capacity of about 4 chunks and modality free coding (like CE)
    • What does modality free mean?
      coding - not limited to sight or sound or any one sense since it needs to manipulate all manner of information
    • What is parallel processing and how does it link to WMM?
      + where processes involved in a cognitive task occur at once
      + the WMM provides and explanation for parallel processing
    • Why is the data from the experiments reliable and what does this mean with the experiments?
      + confounding variables are easily/ carefully controlled as the model was developed based on data collected from lab experiments
      + thus, the experiment can be replicated
    • What do PET scans show in regards to the WMM?
      + showed that different areas of the brain are used upon undertaking verbal and visual tasks which may apply to the components of Working memory
    • What did Baddeley and Hitch do in 1976 and what type of study was it?
      + dual task study
      + aimed to investigate is participants use different parts of the working memory at the same time
      + Method: pps had to perform two tasks at the same time (digit span and verbal reasoning)
      + results: as digits increases, pps took longer to answer
      + conclusion: verbal reasoning was using the CE and digit span made use of the phonological loop
    • How do brain scans show evidence that supports the working memory model?
      + brain scans show that verbal and spatial working memories are located in different brain areas
      + phonological store is in Wernicke's area and articulatory rehearsal loop is in Broca's
      + Wernicke's area controls the ability to understand the meaning of words and Broca's area (with motor cortex) controls the ability to speak those words
    • What did Paulesu et al. (1993) find in relation to the phonological loop?
      + put volunteers into PET scan to measure the blood flow in the brain while performing a memory task
      + Task 1: memorised a series of letters which involved the inner voice and inner ear
      + Task 2: making judgements about whether letters rhymed which involved the inner voice
      + articulatory control system located in Broca's area (inner voice)
      + supramarginal gyrus (inner ear) activated showing phonological store
      + different parts of the phonological loop activate different parts of the brain
    • What is research done on the visuospatial sketchpad?
      + Wolbers et al. (2011) at Edinburgh University
      + compared spatial awareness of sighter and blind participants
      + blind participants could use other senses like touch to understand spatial awareness
      + spatial awareness does not depend on vision and a separate division of visuospatial sketchpad should be made for visual and spatial working memory
    • What was the aim and procedure of Robbins et al's experiment (1966)?

      + aim: apply working-memory model to issue of nature of thought processes occurring in chess players
      + methods: 20 male chess players from Cambridge, UK. wanted to see if memory recall affected by processing interfering information.
      + Participants viewed an arrangement of pieces on chess board for ten seconds and board was on left as they sat facing forward
      + then had to recreate arrangement on different chess board on right using working-memory
    • What were the conditions of Robbins et al.'s study?
      + type of distracting information they had to process while completing the task was the IV
      + one - participant's phonological loop interfered with as they had to repeat 'the' every second to the rhythm of a metronome (steady pulse/ beat)
      + two - visuospatial sketchpad interfered with as they had to type into simple keyboard (4x4 numbers) out of sight under a table
      + required to type with one hand and arrange pieces with another hand
    • What were the results of Robbins et al.'s study?
      + far greater reduction in recalling chess positions when using keyboard task
      + average score for keyboard task was 4/25 and 16/25 for other condition
    • What conclusion did Robbins et al come to?
      + provides evidence for existence of separate slave systems processing different information during WM tasks
      + visuospatial interference had a greater effect on visuospatial memory showing that different systems of processing information are present
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