EVALUATION OF WMM

• Weakness: Contradictory Evidence for the visual-spatial sketchpad

  • Lieberman (1980) points out that blind people have excellent spatial awareness 
  • Never had any visual information
  • Argues that VSS should be separated into 2 components- 1 for visual, 1 for spatial
  • Decreases the external validity of the model 
• Strength: Supporting Evidence for CE & Phonological Loop:

  • Baddeley & Hitch told ppts to perform 2 tasks at the same time (dual task performance)
  • Digit span task- repeat list of numbers
  • Verbal reasoning task- asking ppts to answer true or false to various questions
  • Visual & Verbal tasks- performance similar to performing separately 
  • Visual & Visual / Verbal & Verbal- performance declined substantially
  • Furthermore- KF sustained damage to STM, LTM not affected (memory for visual info)
  • Increases validity- idea of separate stores in STM
• Weakness: Opposing Theory

  • MSM- explains how info is lost from working memory, WMM doesn’t 
  • Decreases validity of WMM as the MSM is explained in detail and it ignores areas considered by the MSM