Working-Memory Model

Question 1

Who discovered the WMM?

Answer 1

Baddley and Hitch

Question 2

What is the WMM?

Answer 2

• An explanation for how one aspect of the memory (STM) is organised and how it functions.
• The WMM is concerned with the part of the mind that is active when we are temporarily storing and manipulating information.

Question 3

What is the Central Executive?

Answer 3

• attentional process that monitors incoming information
• makes decisions and allocates slave systems to tasks.
• has a very limited capacity.

Question 4

What is the Phonological Loop?

Answer 4

• first slave systems
• deals with auditory information and preserves the order in which information arrives.
• coded acoustically
• the phonological store, stores the words you hear.
• the articulatory process allows the maintenance rehearsal in a ‘loop’ to keep them in working memory while they are need.

Question 5

What is the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad?

Answer 5

• second slave system
• stores visual and/or spatial information when needed
• has limited capacity
• visual cache stores visual data
• inner scribe records the arrangements of objects in the visual fields.

Question 6

What is the Episodic Buffer?

Answer 6

• third slave system
• temporary store for information
• integrates the visual, spatial and verbal information stored/processed by stores and maintaining a sense of time sequencing.
• limited capacity for about 4 chunks of information.