The working memory model

• What is Centeral Executive/head of the model

  receives sense of information that controls attention & filters info before passing on to the subsystems.
• Centeral executive capacity

  Limited in capacity (four items) & capable of dealing with only one strand of information at a time.
• What are the sub-systems in the central executive

  Phonological loop, episodic buffer, visuo-spatial sketchpad
• What is the Phonological loop

  Processes sound information (acoustic coding).
• What does the phonological loop contain

  Primary Acoustic store (inner ear storing words recently heard) and Articulatory process (inner voice, storing via sub-vocal repetition).
• What is the capacity of phonological loop

  2 secs
• What is the Visuo-spatial sketchpad

  Processes (codes) visual & spatial information.
• What does the Visuo-spatial sketchpad contain?

  Visual cache ( A passive store of form and colour/visual data) and the Inner Scribe “inner eye” (active store of relationships in 3D space/arrangement of objects in visual field)
• What is an episodic buffer

  Added to WMM in 2000 as the model needed a general store to hold and combine information from VSS, PL, CE and long-term memory. It is a temporary store of information and maintains sense of time sequencing - recording events (episodes) happening, links to LTM.
• Diagram


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• Strength - What did Baddeley et al.'s research suggest about the relationship between visual and verbal tasks in working memory?

  Found that participants struggled more with two visual tasks or two verbal tasks at the same time because these tasks compete for the same subsystem (Visual-Spatial Sketchpad for visual tasks and Phonological Loop for verbal tasks). However, there was no competition when performing a visual task and a verbal task together, suggesting that there are separate subsystems for processing visual (VSS) and verbal (PL) information in working memory.
• Strength - What did Shallice and Warrington's study of patient KF demonstrate about memory stores?

  KF who had a brain injury. His STM for auditory information was poor (damaged PL) but he could process visual information normally (intact VSS) This supports the view that there are separate visual and acoustic memory stores.
• Strength - Comparison of WMM and STM

  The WMM seems more accurate than the STM component of the MSM describing how memory is used as an active processor. Psychologists often now refer to working memory instead of short-term memory.
• Strength - What did Baddeley’s research on word length effect suggest about the capacity of the Phonological Loop (PL)?

  Baddeley found that participants could recall more monosyllabic (short) words than polysyllabic (long) words, suggesting that the capacity of the Phonological Loop (PL) is influenced by the time it takes to say the words. This is known as the word length effect, with a typical capacity of about 2 seconds for rehearsal.
• Limitation - What did Baddeley say about the Central Executive (CE) in the Working Memory Model?

  Baddeley described the Central Executive (CE) as the most important but least understood component of working memory. He argued that there must be more to the CE than just attention, suggesting it is made up of separate subcomponents. This makes the CE an unsatisfactory component, challenging the integrity of the Working Memory Model.
• Limitation - what is the key issue with external validity in most memory studies

  A key issue is that many memory studies lack mundane realism, as the tasks used are unrealistic or artificial. This limits their external validity and makes it difficult to generalize the findings to how we use memory in everyday life.