wmm

• strength is Tim Shallice and Elizabeth Warrinton’s research on the case of KF in 1970. KF suffered a brain injury. This led to him having a poor STM ability of auditory information, but had a great visual ability to process information.  He was not able to remember information read out to him( phonological loop), but could remember the information when he read it to himself (visuo-spatial sketchpad. This means that his phonological loop is damaged, but his visuo-spatial sketchpad remained intact, This suggests that they work independently in order to process information.
• Visuo-spatial sketchpad

  The visuo-spatial sketchpad is where visual and spatial information is kept. It consists of the visual cache, and the inner scribe. The visual cache is where the visual information is stored. The inner scribe is where the information is manipulated.

  Episodic buffer

  The episodic buffer is a temporary store of information. AIt integrates all the materials processed by the other stores, and keeps it in time order.  Has a limited capacity of around 4 chunks. Links all the information to the LTM and either cognitive processes such as perception.
• Central executive

  The central executive is mainly focused on attention. It monitors the incoming information  and divides our limited attention and allocates the information into the subsystems. Has a limited capacity and duration of around 2 seconds of information.
• Phonological loop

  The phonological loop is based on audacity information which is based on what we hear. The phonological loop consists of the phonological store, and the articulatory process. The phonological store is where the auditory material is stored, and the articulatory system is where the maintenance rehearsal of the auditory material is. 
• limitation is that there is a lack of clarity when it comes to the central executive. Bddeley in  2003 recognised this himself when he said”it is the most important but the least understood of the working memory”. The central executive needs to be more clearly specified than  just attention. As some psychologists believe that the central executive consists of different components. This suggests that the central executive is an unsatisfactory component which challenges the validity.
• trength is that it supports the independent existence of the visuo-spatial sketchpad. In 1975 Baddely carried out research with participants. Firstly they carried out a visual and verbal task simultaneously, and the conclusion was that their performance was the same when they performed these tasks separately. But when both of the tasks carried out were visual they did worse when they did them simultaneously compared to when they did them independently of each other. This shows that there must be a separate subsystem for visual information.