Working Memory Model

• 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