Outline and evaluate the working memory model (12) Baddely and Hitch considered that the STM store in the Multi-store Model was too bland and simplified; they believed that STM was not a passive store, but several active processes that manipulate information. Baddely and Hitch also suggested that if a task involved different parts of the wrking memory system then 2 tasks could be undertaken simultaneously; eg, processing vision and sound. There is evidence to show that there is more than one component in STM and this has been provided by Baddeley and Hitch. They divised the dual task technique. They asked participants to perform a reasoning task while simultaneously reciting outloud a list of six digits.
The last criticism is that the model is very linear. The model says that the only way information gets to your long term memory is like: sensory memory short term memory rehearsal loop long term memory but we know that a two way flow, rather than a one way flow, is more realistic. For
The central executive is also said to co -ordinate the performance of two separate tasks. It has limited capacity; however it is quite flexible and can use two slave systems, the phonological loop and the visual sketch pad. The phonological loop is the most extensively studied part of the working memory. It also has a limited duration and capacity. But this is more to do with how long it takes us to recite a word not how many words we can hold.
The central executive controls attention, and is involved in planning and synthesizing information from the other two 'slave systems'. The central executive can also process information from any modality. Also, the central executive has a limited capacity, making it a “finite mental work space” as it's unable to accomplish too many processes at once. This idea is supported by the dual task experiment, where participants were given two tasks to accomplish simultaneously. The first task used the central executive in the form of a simple sentence verification task.
Another important component is the visuo-spatial scratch pad; it stores visual and spatial information and can be thought of as an inner eye. It is responsible for setting up and manipulating mental images. Like the phonological loop, it has limited capacity but the limits of the two systems are independent. In other words, it is possible, for example, to rehearse a set of digits in the phonological loop while simultaneously making decisions about the spatial layout of a set of letters in the visual spatial scratchpad. Finally in 2000 Baddeley proposed an additional component, the episodic buffer.
Whilst the central executive is the most important and versatile component of the working memory model, there is no empirical evidence demonstrating its existence or how it functions. It is difficult to devise a test for its existence or verify that it is a separate component from the visuo-spatial sketchpad or the phonological articulatory store. Baddeley suggests that the central executive acts as a system that controls attention-based processes rather than a memory store. This differs from the phonological loop and visuo-spatial sketchpad, which are specialized storage systems. The central executive enables the working memory system to selectively attend to stimuli and ignore others.
Rehearsal maintains information in the STM however it is still vulnerable to being forgotten due to limited duration (decay) or being displaced by new incoming information due to limited capacity (displacement). If rehearsed and processed deep enough (e.g. through elaborative or maintenance rehearsal) the information then passes to the long-term memory store which has unlimited capacity and unlimited duration dependent on the level of processing of the information received. While the LTM encoding is mainly semantic the STM encoding is auditory with a capacity of 7 +/- 2 items and duration of up to 18 seconds. Research evidence by Glanzer et al demonstrated support for the STM and LTM being different stores.
The working memory model is an improvement over the multi-store model. It demonstrates how the short term memory works as it explains how we can store information briefly and simultaneously manipulate it, e.g. mental arithmetic. This shows that the model appears to measure what it is intended to. There is evidence to prove the existence of the phonological loop; Baddeley thought that because longer chunks of information take longer to say, this may affect how much the short term memory can hold, rather than the capacity.
'Outline and evaluate the model of working memory' 'Outline and evaluate the model of working memory' Word count- 974 Without memory we would have trouble with acquiring, retaining and recalling information. Short term memory has restricted capacity and duration. Information that goes though short term memory is lost unless rehearsal takes place. The working memory model (WM) looks at short term memory and how it is not a simplistic model like the multi store model. (Baddeley 2003).
This has contributed to our understanding of our behaviour because we know that the different parts of the brain work together to produce behaviour as opposed to just using only just one part of the brain. This is shown with patients who have their Corpus Callosum cut, which is the middle part of the brain that allows both the hemispheres to communicate with other. When this is severed, the brain’s hemispheres cannot communicate with each other anymore, instead they work independently, for example, the right side of the brain is responsible for the left half of the body and the left side is responsible for the right side of the body. Because the sides are no longer able to communicate, the parts of the body work independently with the left part of the body operating to what the right hemisphere sees and the right part of the body operating to what the left hemisphere sees. However, the just because one part of the brain is damaged it doesn’t make a huge change to our behaviour, for example if Wernicke’s area of the brain, the area that is responsible for understanding language was damaged, we won’t be capable of understanding