Features of Working Memory

• For many years the idea was that STM was a location for the storage of material as it was processed into LTM
• More recently this memory register has been seen as a system for working with the information we are aware of at any given time
• Working memory


  Component psychologists refer to for consciously working on information
• Baddeley ET AL: '2009'
• Baddeley and Hitch’s model of working memory

  • Phonological loop
  • Visuospatial Sketchpad (VSSP)
  • Central Executive
  • Episodic buffer
• Phonological loop


  A subsystem responsible for the auditory working memory
• Articulatory rehearsal loop


  Another name for the storage of what we hear
• Visuospatial Sketchpad (VSSP)


  Storage system for visual and spatial information in the working memory
• Central Executive


  Conductor of the working memory, NOT a slave system
• Functions of the Central Executive

  • Inhibition
  • Switching
  • Updating
• Inhibition


  Screening out irrelevant material
• Switching


  Changing attention from one item to another
• Updating


  Modifying items brought on from LTM before sending them to memory
• Episodic buffer


  A sub-system that helps to retrieve information from the LTM
• The episodic buffer selects and encodes info into the LTM
• Baddeley added the episodic buffer to the model in 2000
• Central Executive


  Controls the Phonological loop and the Visuospatial loop
• The central executive puts together the sounds and vision of working memory and controls our attention
• The central executive enables us to perform mental manipulation of data
• The store that allows us to understand a sentence of more than a few words is part of the Phonological loop
• The store we use to help picture all the doors in our house is part of the Visuospatial Sketchpad