Features of working memory- Baddeley and Hitch (1974)

• • For many years the idea was that STM was a location for the storage of material as it was processed into LTM
  • More recently however this memory register has been seen as a system for working with the information we are aware of at any given time
  • Since we are consciously working on this information, psychologists now refer to this component as the working memory (Baddeley ET AL, 2009)
• Baddeley and Hitch’s model shows that there are four separate but interdependent aspects of working memory:

  1. Central Executive
  2. Phonological loop
  3. Visuospatial Sketchpad (VSSP)
  4. The Episodic buffer
• 2. Phonological loop

  • A subsystem/slave system responsible for the auditory working memory
  • This is the storage of what we hear and is also called the articulatory rehearsal loop
  • The store that allows us to understand a sentence of more than a few words
• 3. Visuospatial Sketchpad (VSSP)

  • Slave system
  • Storage system for visual and spatial information in the working memory
  • This is the store that we use to help picture all the for example doors in our house
• 1.     Central Executive

  • Conductor, NOT a slave system
  • In control of the Phonological loop and the Visuospatial sketchpad, hence why those two systems are called slave systems.
  • Functional component of the working memory that is responsible for switching attention from task to task, deciding what material is to be retrieved from or committed to LTM performing calculations and making linkages
  • The central executive puts together the sounds and vision of working memory and controls our attention, which enables us to perform mental manipulation of data
• • 3 main functions of the central executive have been identified as
  • Inhibition- Screening out irrelevant material
  • Switching- Changing attention from one item to another
  • Updating- Modifying items brought on from LTM before sending them to memory through the Episodic buffer, creating a process of accommodation of the semantic network
• 4. The Episodic buffer

  • Definition ⇒ The episodic buffer is a sub-system that helps to retrieve information from the LTM to associate with information that is in the working memory and to select and encode info into the LTM
  • According to Baddeley and Hitch a major problem with the working memory that he developed did not explain how working memory links to the LTM. Consequently, in 2000, Baddeley added a fourth component to the model called the episodic buffer