Working model of memory

• Created by Baddeley and Hitch - working model of memory or short term memory
• Short term stores and processes memory according to WMM - limited capacity
• Phonological loop - articulatory control process


  inner voice

  • rehearses verbal sounds
  • helps us to prepare speech and think in words
• Phonological loop - phonological store


  phonological store

  • inner ear
  • receives and stores sounds
  • can only focus on one thing at a time
• visuospatial sketchpad


  inner eye

  • what we see or what an object may look like
  • spatial information - helps us know where things are
• central executive

  • in control of the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad
  • decides what we pay attention to and which slave system to use and which it should ignore
• episodic buffer - 2000 - why was it made?


  made because no explanation how long term memories may be brought into our working model of memory

  how sound and visual information could be intergrated
• episodic buffer


  back up store

  • integrates all info from other components and LTM
  • stores and processes visual and verbal stm
  • temporarily integrates LTM so we can use it in our STM
• Case study KF - supporting evidence


  KF involved in motorcycling accident - damage to his STM, specifically verbal recall

  • when tested he could only verbally recall 2 items from STM
  • when STM tested visually his recall was unaffected
  • research suggest: stm may have separate components - one for verbal and visual information
• Paulesu et al - separate components to the phonological loop


  Volunteers in PET scan to monitor blood flow in brain while they performed memory tasks

  • task one - tested inner voice and inner ear - memorise a series of letters
  • task two - only use inner voice - making judgments if letters rhymed
  • then compared different parts of brain - concluded inner voice BROCAS AREA
  • inner ear other area
  • different parts of the phonological loop activated differenet brain areas
• Dual task study - people doing the two tasks at the same time


  condition one - 2 verbal tasks

  condition two - 2 visual tasks

  condition three - 1 verbal and 1 visual task

  • performance gets worse when doing two tasks - using the same mental resource
  • not affected performance - separate
  • provides support for separate components for memory
• Artificial tasks


  don't reflect on the memory tasks we conduct in everyday life
• Demand characteristics


  participants finding out the aim of the study and wanting to perform really well - weakens research
• criticism for visuospatial sketchpad


  compared spatial awareness in volunteers who could see and blind since birth

  • blind participants could use touch for spatial awareness and is not dependent on vision
  • visual spatial sketchpad needs working on
• criticism of central executive


  little seems to be know and its vague and is very difficult to test

  Baddeley - knows that there is little understood about central executive