Asyah Heidar
Outline and evaluate the Working Memory Model (16 Marks)
The working memory model was proposed by Baddeley and Hitch to resolve
some of the limitations of the MSM. They felt that STM consists of multiple
stores rather than just one. The central executive controls the WMM by
allocating subsystems to tasks. It doesn’t store information and has a very
limited capacity. The phonological loop is one of the subsystems that controls
auditory information. It consists of the phonological store which stores the
words we hear, and the articulatory process which allows maintenance
rehearsal of verbal information. It has limited capacity and info is coded
acoustically. Another subsystem is the VSS; this controls visual information. It
contains the visual cache which stores visual data and the inner scribe which
deals with spatial information and records the arrangement of objects in a
visual field. It has a capacity of 3-4 objects and info is coded visually. The
episodic buffer was newly discovered and integrates information from
subsystems into episode and is linked to LTM.
The dual-task performance study supports the separate existence of the VSS.
When P’s were asked to perform the digit span test and verbal reasoning test
at the same time, Baddeley showed that P’s had more difficulty doing two
visual tasks than doing both visual and verbal tasks at the same time. This is
because both visual tasks compete for the same subsystem, whereas there’s
no competition when performing a task requiring both subsystems. This shows
there must be two separate processing units within STM, one that processes
visually and one that processes auditory information.
Moreover, KF’s study supports the WMM. This is due to his ability to recall
visual but not verbal information. This was shown after his brain damage from
his motorbike accident, where his immediate recall of letters and digits was
better when he read them than when they were read to him; meaning his
phonological loop was impaired but his VSS was intact. This finding strongly
supports the existence of separate STM stores that are stored in different parts
of the brain.
A weakness of the WMM however, is that it lacks ecological validity. This is
because studies that support this model are artificial since the tasks are
unrepresentative of what we do in our daily lives. E.g. recalling random
sequences of letters. Also, the tasks were carried out in highly controlled
Outline and evaluate the Working Memory Model (16 Marks)
The working memory model was proposed by Baddeley and Hitch to resolve
some of the limitations of the MSM. They felt that STM consists of multiple
stores rather than just one. The central executive controls the WMM by
allocating subsystems to tasks. It doesn’t store information and has a very
limited capacity. The phonological loop is one of the subsystems that controls
auditory information. It consists of the phonological store which stores the
words we hear, and the articulatory process which allows maintenance
rehearsal of verbal information. It has limited capacity and info is coded
acoustically. Another subsystem is the VSS; this controls visual information. It
contains the visual cache which stores visual data and the inner scribe which
deals with spatial information and records the arrangement of objects in a
visual field. It has a capacity of 3-4 objects and info is coded visually. The
episodic buffer was newly discovered and integrates information from
subsystems into episode and is linked to LTM.
The dual-task performance study supports the separate existence of the VSS.
When P’s were asked to perform the digit span test and verbal reasoning test
at the same time, Baddeley showed that P’s had more difficulty doing two
visual tasks than doing both visual and verbal tasks at the same time. This is
because both visual tasks compete for the same subsystem, whereas there’s
no competition when performing a task requiring both subsystems. This shows
there must be two separate processing units within STM, one that processes
visually and one that processes auditory information.
Moreover, KF’s study supports the WMM. This is due to his ability to recall
visual but not verbal information. This was shown after his brain damage from
his motorbike accident, where his immediate recall of letters and digits was
better when he read them than when they were read to him; meaning his
phonological loop was impaired but his VSS was intact. This finding strongly
supports the existence of separate STM stores that are stored in different parts
of the brain.
A weakness of the WMM however, is that it lacks ecological validity. This is
because studies that support this model are artificial since the tasks are
unrepresentative of what we do in our daily lives. E.g. recalling random
sequences of letters. Also, the tasks were carried out in highly controlled
