The Working memory model (WMM) Flashcards
Who developed the WMM?
Baddeley & Hitch
What is the central executive (CE)?
Acts as a filter to determine which info received by the sense organ is and isn’t attended to. It processes info in all sensory forms, directs info to the slave’s systems and collects responses.
What is Baddeley’s research on the central executive?
Found that pp’s found it difficult to generate lists of random numbers while switching between pressing numbers & letters on a keyboard - suggests the 2 tasks were competing for CE resources.
Give evaluations of CE
Little is known about it so it isn’t clear how it works or what it does - this means it can be used to explain almost any experimental results.
What is the function of the phonological loop (PL)?
It deals with auditory info and the order of info. As its mainly acoustic store, confusions occur with similar sounding words.
What did Baddeley subdivide the PL into?
The primary acoustic store - stores words recently heard.
The articulatory process - keeps info in the PL through sub-vocal repetition info & is linked to speech production.
What is the visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSS)?
Handles non-phonological info and is a temporary store for visual and spatial items & the relationships between them. It helps people to navigate around and interact with their physical environment.
What did Logie subdivide the VSS into?
Visual cache - stores visual material about form & colour.
Inner scribe - handles spatial relationships & rehearses and transfers info in the visual cache to the CE.
What is the episodic buffer (EB)?
It was introduced later to explain how its possible to temporarily store info combined together from the CE, PL, VSS & LTM.
What is the procedure of Alkhalifa’s research on the effects of the episodic buffer on learning with serial & parallel presentations of materials?
48 uni students were presented with no.s on a screen given either a sequence or they compare info in different parts of the screen simultaneously. They were asked to answer a number of problem solving questions concerning the numbers.
What are the findings of Alkhalifa’s research on the effects of the episodic buffer on learning with serial & parallel presentations of materials?
PP’s given numbers presented in a sequence got more problem solving questions right than those given nos in parallel fashion.
What is the conclusion of Alkhalifa’s research on the effects of the episodic buffer on learning with serial & parallel presentations of materials?
As sequential processing was more effective it suggests the total capacity of WM is larger than that determined by the capacity of the PL & VSS.
Give evaluations for Alkhalifa’s research on the effects of the episodic buffer on learning with serial & parallel presentations of materials.
Lab study - lack ecological validity
The findings suggest practical applications in the designing of educational systems as students will be able to learn more material with teaching methods using sequential than parallel ones.
