working store model

• central executive is the supervisory role. It monitors incoming data, directs attention and allocated subsystems to tasks. It has very limited storage capacity and the encoding is all
• phonological loop deals with auditory information and preserves the order in which the info arrives. It is subdivided into:

  • phonological store- stores the words you hear
  • articulatory process- allows maintenance rehearsal

  encoding is acoustic and capacity is 2 units
• Visio-spatial sketchpad stores visual and/or spatial information when required. Logie subdivided visio-spatial sketchpad into:

  • visual cache- stores visual data
  • inner scribe- records arraignment of objects in visual field

  Encoding is visual, capacity is 4 pieces
• episodic buffer is a temporary store for information. It integrates visual, spatial and verbal information from other stores. It also maintains a sense of time sequencing as it records events that are happening. Encoding is all, capacity is limited
• One strength of the working store model is support from clinical evidence. For example, Shallice and Warrington studied patient KF who had a brian injury. His STM was poor but he could process visual information normally. This supports the working memory model view that there are separate visual and acoustic memory stores.
• One strength is that dual task performance studies supprt the visual-spatial sketchpad. Baddeley et al. participants found it harder to carry out 2 visual tasks at the same time than do a verbal and a visual task together. This is because both visual tasks compete for the same subsystem. There is no competition with a verbal and visual task. Therefore, there must be a separate subsystem that processes visual input ad a separate subsystem for verbal processes.
• One limitation of working store model is lack of clarity over the central executive. Baddeley said the central executive was the most important but the least understood component of working memory. There must be more to the central executive than just being ‘attention’. Therefore the central executive is an unsatisfactory component and this challenges the integrity if the model.