Working Memory Model Flashcards
(19 cards)
What’s the working memory model?
- Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
- criticism of multi-store model
- questions existence of a single STM store
- explanation of how STM is organised and how it functions
- consists of four main components
- STM is seen as an active store instead of a passive store
What are the two predictions of the WMM?
- if two tasks make use of the same component, they can’t be performed successfully together
- if two tasks make use of different components, they can be performed as well together as separately
- e.g. two visual tasks = poor performance
Weaknesses of the MSM
- not supported by case study of KF
- oversimplified - says there’s only one type of STM
- too much emphasis on the role of rehearsal
What’s the phonological loop?
- stores auditory and verbal information (acoustic coding)
- remembers the order the information is presented
- when words are written down on a page, we use subvocal rehearsal (in our head) to store them
- divided into the phonological store and the articulatory process
- limited capacity
What’s the phonological store?
- passive store
- holds information for 1-2 seconds
- filters out information that is not needed
What’s the articulatory process?
- allows maintenance rehearsal
- holds information needed for an ongoing task, until it’s no longer needed
- capacity is how many words we can say in two seconds
What’s the word length effect?
- short monosyllabic words are recalled more successfully than longer polysyllabic words
- supports idea that the phonological loop holds the amount of information we can say in 2 seconds
What’s articulatory suppression?
- prevention from rehearsal by repeating an irrelevant sound - it fills up the space and displaces the actual information to be remembered
- performing two tasks which both require the phonological loop can be difficult
- e.g. revising whilst listening to music
What’s the phonological similarity effect?
- words that sound alike aren’t usually recalled as well as words that sound different
- supports idea that phonological loop uses acoustic coding
What’s the visuo-spatial sketchpad?
- limited capacity
- stores visual and spatial information
- divided into the visual cache and the inner scribe
What’s the inner scribe?
- stores spatial information (position of something, relationship between things)
What’s the visual cache?
- stores visual information (appearance)
What’s the episodic buffer?
- multi-modal store
- combines information from all five senses to create episodic memories
- added to the model in 2000
- limited capacity
- links working memory to LTM
What’s the central executive?
- manages activity of all three stores
- directs correct information to each store and divides attention across stores
- no storage capacity
- limited attention capacity
- can become overloaded
Strength - clinical evidence
Patient KF
- damage to his STM but no damage to his LTM
- impaired verbal STM but intact visual STM
- only his phonological loop had been damaged
- WMM says we have multiple STM stores
- MSM can’t explain this
- however, case studies are unique so can’t be generalised
Strength - dual task performance
Baddeley (1975)
- showed that participants had more difficulty doing two visual tasks than doing a visual and verbal task at the same time
- this is because both visual tasks require the visuo-spatial sketchpad
- there’s no competition when doing a verbal and visual task
- provides support for their separate existence
Strength - neuroimaging
- different parts of the brain are active during visual and verbal working memory tasks
- occipital lobe is active during visual tasks
- temporal lobe is active during verbal tasks
weakness - artificial tasks
- tasks performed don’t relate to everyday life
- lacks ecological validity
Weakness - central executive
- lacks falsifiability
- doesn’t explain anything
- vague and untestable
- some believe that it consists of separate components so it hasn’t been fully explained
