Lecture 4

Question 1

What is the CE?

Answer 1

a system for attentional control of the slave systems (without any storage capacity)

Question 2

What is the CE important for?

Answer 2

controlling action where no routine action is appropriate or where a change of routine is required

Question 3

Alzheimer disease experiment was by who?

Answer 3

Baddeley et al, 1991

Question 4

What did the Alzheimer experimetns how?

Answer 4

PPs with AD’s ability on 2 component tasks = largely unaffected, but dual task performance = increasingly severely affected

Question 5

Who came up with the three roles of hte central executive?

Answer 5

Baddeley, 1996

Question 6

What are the three roles of the central executive?

Answer 6

Dividing attention between concurrent tasks when they are demanding
Task switching
Ability to relate the content of WM to LTM

Question 7

What evidence is there for WM and LTM interaction?

Answer 7

Effect of meaning on span tasks - chunking. E.g. Baddeley, 1987 –> normal PPs can remember up to 16 words if combined in a meaningful sentence

Question 8

Who showed evidence for PL & VSSP interaction?

Answer 8

Logie et al, 2002

Question 9

What is the evidence for PL and VSSP interaction

Answer 9

There is small but detectable visual similarity effect in verbal recall showing words are coded both phonemically and visually. Logie et al, 2002

Question 10

What did Baddeley & Wilson, 2002 show?

Answer 10

supraspan prose recall in absence of LTM

Question 11

What were the four problems with the B& H (1974) model?

Answer 11

How WM links to LTM
How the slave systems interact
Where supraspan capacity is held
Binding problem

Question 12

What is the binding problem?

Answer 12

how information from various subsystems is combined to form a temporary hollistic representation that is available to consciousness

Question 13

Why did BAddeley introduce the episodic buffer?

Answer 13

HE thought there was evidence for a temporary store capable of holding complex information and manipulating and using it over a time scale far beyond the normal capacity of hte slave systems of WM.

Question 14

Four characteristics of the episodic buffer?

Answer 14

storage system with 4 chunk capacity
Representations within the buffer = multi-modal
contents of buffer = consciously accesible via central exec
Information in buffer = rehearsed by attention. If unattended = lost

Question 15

What are the three main problems with the central executive?

Answer 15

‘Homonculus’ problem
Fractionation of CE
Alternative theories

Question 16

What is the ‘homonculus’ problem?

Answer 16

BAddeley (2001) –> ‘ a convenient ragbag into which could be thrust… awkward questions’ –> at beginning

Question 17

What is the fractionation of hte CE linked to?

Answer 17

Norman & Shallice’s 1985 supervisory attentional store = believed to be associated with frontal lobes

Question 18

What is the main alternative theory to the CE?

Answer 18

Cowan’s embedded process theory.

Question 19

What does Baddeley think of Cowan’s theory?

Answer 19

‘leads to a different emphasis but is not in any fundamental sense incompatible with a multi-component model’

Question 20

What happens when automatic control is not possible?

Answer 20

Supervisory attentional system is needed

Question 21

What is the experiment about hte taper cutteR?

Answer 21

Baddeley & Wilson, 1998 –> patient consistenlty cut tape at v short lengths - knew it was wrong, couldn’t stop

Question 22

Driving experiment

Answer 22

Brown et al, 1969 –> drive through gaps of varying widths, concurrent verbal reasoning task. Seriously disrupted judgement –> trying to go hthourgh gaps that were too small

Question 23

Practical implication of Alzheimer people not being able to dual task>

Answer 23

Alberoni et al, 1992 –> conversations wtih more than one person = difficult

Question 24

When did BAddeley think CE was required?

Answer 24

if attention had to be switched between 2 or more tasks

Question 25

Who argued against hte CE being solely in charge of task switching?

Answer 25

Mansell (2005) ==> idea that switiching is function of single attentional system = oversimplified. Some aspects of switching = relatively automacit, others = almost certainly attentionally demanding

Question 26

What evidence is there for separate EB from CE?`

Answer 26

Allen & BAddeley (2008) -- disrupting hte CE impairs immediate memory for both unrelated word lists and sentences, but doesnt reduce the capcacity to bind/chunk words into sentence.

Question 27

What is a recent evidence of dissociation between PL and VSSP?

Answer 27

Nee et al, 2013

Question 28

What did Nee et al, 2013 show

Answer 28

MEta-analysis of executive components of working memory --> 2 separate frontal regions recruited across exec deemands. One = especially sensitive to spatial content, the other to non-spatail content

Question 29

Which patient shows evdience of VIsuospatial dissociation?

Answer 29

PAtient LH - Farah et al

Question 30

What did PAtient LH do?

Answer 30

Performed well on tasks requireiing spatial imagery but had great difficulty retrieving shapes, colours and relative size of objects in imagery tasks

Question 31

What did Logie and PEarson's experiment tell us and what year was it in>?

Answer 31

1997 -- dissociation between visual and spatial non-verbal WM = also indicated by the distinctiveness of their developmental trajectories

Question 32

Evidence for CE's role in focusing attention?

Answer 32

Robbins et al, 1996 --> while chess playing isn't disrupted by articulatory suppression, it is significantly disrupted by concurrent VS task and even more so by random digit task --> strong evidence for implication of CE in range of complex tasks that require focuesed attention

Question 33

What evidence is there for CE's role in switching attention?

Answer 33

Baddeley et al (2001) - switching task nder series of dual task conditions --> consistent but small role of the CE in attentional swtiching

Question 34

Three problems addressed by introduction of the episodic buffer?

Answer 34

No explanation for advantage in recall by cause by meaningful relationships or chunking No explations of how sub-systems relate to and interface with LTM No explanation for how 2 slave systems might interact

Question 35

What evidence cause the need for EB due to a lack of explanation of how sub systems relate to and inteface with LTM>

Answer 35

MEmory span for unrelated words has proved to be affected by variables that are ordinarily related to LTM e.g. word frequency and imageability (Hulme et al, 1995)

Question 36

What evidence caused the need for EB due to a lack of explanation of how the 2 slave sytems might interact?

Answer 36

Number of studies showing that simple verbal span can show evidence of combined verbal and visual encoding (chincotta et al, 1999)

Question 37

What evidence is there that processing different stimuli requries different CE resources?

Answer 37

Ketelsen & WElch (2010) - results = processing of verbal and spatial stimuli in dual task paradigm requires seperate CE resources

Question 38

Who disagrees with idea of CE as single entity and what example does he use against it?

Answer 38

Parkin (1998) - BADS test - range of assessment to assess CE ability.

Question 39

What evidence is there against single entity CE?

Answer 39

Shallice (1988) Bench et al (1993) Fletcher et al (1995)

Question 40

What did Shallice (1988) find?

Answer 40

non-equipotentiality in frontal cortex for differnt types of task

Question 41

What did Bench et al (1993) find?

Answer 41

Using fMRI - stroop test gives rise to various patterns of activation in right frontal cortex

Question 42

What did Fletcher et al (1995) find?

Answer 42

Tests measuring retrieval = primarily activation of right frontal cortex, tasks assessing encoding = rise to left frontal activation