working memory model

• The working memory model (WMM) was created by Baddeley and Hitch (1974). This model looks at short-term memory and what makes up the STM.
• What the WMM consists of:

  • central executive
  • visuospatial sketchpad
  • episodic buffer
  • phonological loop (breaks down into the phonological store & the articulatory control system)
• The central executive monitors all data & sends the data to the correct subsystem.
• The visuospatial sketchpad is the 2nd slave system and is the inner eye. Visual and spatial information is held in this subsystem (what things look like & the relationship between these things). Logie (1995) further divided this into the visual cache (info about colour & form) and the inner scribe (how objects are arranged in the visual field).
• The episodic buffer is the 3rd slave system that is an extra storage system. This is more general than the other subsystems. The episodic buffer helps link working memory to LTM and other cognitive processes.
• The phonological loop is the 1st slave system and is the inner voice. The phonological loop holds information in the same order that it arrived in. This is broken into the phonological store and articulatory control system. The phonological store holds the words heard; the articulatory control system silently repeats these words.
• WMM AO3:

  • research support: Baddeley et al (1975). When ppts were given two verbal or two visual tasks their performance was worse than when they did a verbal and visual task (doing the 2 tasks at the same time). Validates the model/subsections of STM.
  • artificial stimuli: drawing & memorising different words. Little mundane realism. Model isn't valid.
  • central executive = most important but little known about it. CE might be complex, it might do more than just divide the stimuli to the right slave system. Decreases the validity.
• The central executive encoding is non-modality specific.
• the capacity of the central executive is limited.
• The visuospatial sketchpad encodes visually.
• The visuospatial sketchpad has a capacity of 4 objects.
• The phonological loop encodes acoustically.
• The capacity of the phonological loop is 2 seconds.
• The episodic buffer encodes in a multi-modal way.
• The capacity of the episodic buffer is 4 chunks.