The Working Memory Model

Question 1

What is the working memory model?

Answer 1

• proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
• explanation of how short term memory is organised and how it functions
• contains central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer

Question 2

What is the central executive in the WMM?

Answer 2

• has a supervisory role
• monitors incoming data and divides out limited attention
• allocates tasks to slave systems
• very limited capacity and can’t store information

Question 3

What is the phonological loop?

Answer 3

• slave system that deals with auditory information (coding acoustic)
• subdivided into phonological store (stores the words you hear) and articulatory process (allows maintenance rehearsal)

Question 4

What is the Visio-spatial sketchpad?

Answer 4

• slave system that deals with visual or spatial information
• limited capacity (according to Baddeley 2003)
• Logie (1995) subdivided the VSS into visual cache (stores visual data) and inner scribe (records the arrangement of objects in visual field)

Question 5

What is the episodic buffer?

Answer 5

• slave system that acts as a temporary store for information
• integrates visual, spatial and verbal information

Question 6

What are 2 strengths of the WMM?

Answer 6

• strength that it’s supported by Shallice and Warrington (1970) KF study - KF had damaged phonological loop but his visuo-spatial sketchpad was intact
• strength that it’s supported by dual-task performance - Baddeley participants carried out visual and verbal task and when sites the same it was harder to do

Question 7

What’s a limitations of the WMM?

Answer 7

• limitation that there is a lack of clarity over nature of CE - Baddeley said that CE is most important but least understood - too simplistic and CE may have sub categories