The WMM

• The working memory model was proposed by Baddeley and Hitch in 1974
• WMM is a model of STM
• The components of WMM can only communicate with each other via the central executive
• WMM consists of a central executive, phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and episodic buffer
• Phonological loop consists of a phonological store (inner ear) and an articulatory control process (inner voice)
• STM is an active system that allows us to perform two tasks simultaneously if they are being dealt with by different parts
• Central executive


  has limited capacity and its coding is modality free (codes any information received from the sensory register)
• Phonological loop


  Has limited capacity and its coding is acoustic
• Visuo-spatial sketchpad


  Has limited capacity and codes visual and spatial information
• Central executive controls the WMM and is responsible for allocating the task to the other components
• Phonological loop is responsible for verbal information in a speech-based form
• A visuospatial sketchpad is responsible for visual and spatial information
• The episodic buffer was added to the WMM in 2000
• The episodic buffer is a temporary storage used to integrate information from the visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop
• It is difficult to measure the central executive which means that not much is known about it (its function is vague and simplistic)
• The working memory applies to real-life tasks:

  • reading (phonological loop)
  • problem-solving (central executive)
  • navigation (visuospatial sketchpad)
• The KF Case Study supports the Working Memory Model. KF suffered brain damage from a motorcycle accident that damaged his short-term memory.

  
  

  KF’s damage was mainly for verbal information – his memory for visual information was largely unaffected. This shows that there are separate STM components for visual information (VSS) and verbal information (phonological loop).
• The WMM is based on laboratory experiments, which might not accurately reflect real-world scenarios or everyday cognitions which suggests that it has low ecological validity and therefore shouldn't be generalised