The Working Memory Model

• What does WMM state?

  It suggests that the STM is an active system that has different components.
• How many component does STM have according to WMM?

  • Central Executive
  • Phonological Loop
  • Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad (VSS)
  • Episodic Buffer
• Who proposed the idea of the WMM

  Baddeley and Hitch 1974
• What is the Central Executive responsible for?

  Allocates attention, monitors tasks and directs the slave systems.
• What is the Capacity of the Central Executive?

  Limited
• How is the Coding of the Central Executive?

  Modality-free
• What is the Phonological Loop responsible for?

  Processing Auditory Information to prevent loss of information
• What are the 2 parts of the Phonological Loop?

  Phonological Store

  Articulatory Loop
• What is the Phonological Store responsible for?

  Temporary receives and stores heard (auditory) information
• What is the Articulatory Loop responsible for?

  - It is linked to speech production.

  • The STM processes information wished to be used in communication.
  • It is also known as Inner Voice.
• What is the Capacity of the Phonological Loop?

  2 seconds worth of speech
• How is the Phonological Loop coded?

  Acoustically
• What is the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad responsible for?

  Processing Visual and Spatial Information
• What are the 2 sub-component of the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad?

  • Visual Cache
  • Inner scribe
• What is the Visual Cache responsible for?

  Storing visual information.
• What is the Inner Scribe responsible for?

  It stores spatial relationships.
• What is the capacity of the VSS?

  3-4 Objects
• How is the VSS encoded?

  Visually
• What is the episodic buffer responsible for?

  Integrating Information from all components and connects STM to LTM
• What is the Capacity of the Episodic Buffer?

  4 chunks
• How is the Episodic Buffer encoded?

  Modality-free
• What are some supporting research for WMM?

  1. Baddeley and Hitch
  2. KF Case Study
  3. Braver
• What did Baddeley and Hitch do and what were their findings?

  They did Dual Task Studies

  • Found participants could do verbal and visual tasks simultaneously.
  • They struggled with 2 verbal tasks - supporting separate components.
• What did KF case study find and how does it support WMM?

  He suffered from Brain Damage.

  - He impaired verbal STM

  - Visual STM was intact

  Supports that there are separate stores.
• What did Braver do and what did he find?

  Brain Scans.

  - Found activity in the prefrontal cortex during tasks involved in the central executive.
• Weakness of the WMM

  1. There is a lack of clarity of what exactly the Central executive does which leads to the known understanding of the functions and exact role of the CE. Due to this limited clarity, it leads to the reliability and the explanation being questioned as there is not an in-depth understanding.
• Weakness of WMM

  It only focuses on the STM

  • Due to the WMM only focusing on how information get's into STM and how information is retained in the STM.
  • Because of this, it does not explain how information moves to into the LTM and how information will be stored in there.
• Strengths of WMM

  Research evidence

  - There are researches that support the theory as they did prove that there are separate stores in the memory due to the tasks given.

  • There is also case study (KF) which supports the theory.
• Strength of WMM

  WMM tries and accounts for Dual-Task performance

  • Unlike MSM, it takes into account how things such as multitasking are done in real life and how we are able to retain these informations.