Outline And Evaluate The Working Memory Model (Wmm)
Outline and evaluate the working memory model (12)
The working memory model (WMM) suggests that there are three main components to human memory. The central executive is the key component of working memory and is what directs attention to particular tasks, deciding which ‘resources’ (being the phonological loop and visual-spatial sketchpad) are allocated to which tasks. The central executive has a very limited capacity however, and can’t attend to too many things at once. The phonological loop (PL) too has a limited capacity and is what deals with auditory information; it is split into two further parts, the phonological store which holds the words you hear, and the articulatory process which is for the words you hear/see and are rehearsed …show more content…
Firstly, Baddeley and Hitch did a ‘Dual Task’ experiment whereby they asked participants to follow a dot on the wall with a light pointer. Simultaneously they were asked to carry out two other tasks: to describe the angles on the letter ‘F’ and to carry out a simple verbal task. While they found the latter task very easy, they found the angle description task difficult. Baddeley and Hitch concluded that this was because the brain could not carry out tasks which occupied the same component (e.g the light pointer and angle description) due to the limited capacity. However, the brain could cope when the tasks involved separate components (e.g. the light pointer involving the VSSP and verbal task involving the …show more content…
Using an fMRI scan, Bunge measured brain activity and found that, unsurprisingly, there was more when carrying out a dual-task. This showed that increased attentional demands are reflected in brain activity.
Furthermore, evidence for the articulatory process by Baddeley’s ‘Word length effect’ study, shows that long words aren’t remembered as easily as short because they cannot fit into the PL. It also showed that when given an articulatory suppression task, (e.g. repeating ‘the’ over and over again) you cant rehearse the shorter words quickly enough and the word-length effect disappears.
Baddeley also found that when participants were shown words and asked to recall them immediately, they did so much better for sentences than for unrelated words which supports the idea of the episodic buffer- an immediate memory store for items that aren’t visual or
The working memory model (WMM) suggests that there are three main components to human memory. The central executive is the key component of working memory and is what directs attention to particular tasks, deciding which ‘resources’ (being the phonological loop and visual-spatial sketchpad) are allocated to which tasks. The central executive has a very limited capacity however, and can’t attend to too many things at once. The phonological loop (PL) too has a limited capacity and is what deals with auditory information; it is split into two further parts, the phonological store which holds the words you hear, and the articulatory process which is for the words you hear/see and are rehearsed …show more content…
Firstly, Baddeley and Hitch did a ‘Dual Task’ experiment whereby they asked participants to follow a dot on the wall with a light pointer. Simultaneously they were asked to carry out two other tasks: to describe the angles on the letter ‘F’ and to carry out a simple verbal task. While they found the latter task very easy, they found the angle description task difficult. Baddeley and Hitch concluded that this was because the brain could not carry out tasks which occupied the same component (e.g the light pointer and angle description) due to the limited capacity. However, the brain could cope when the tasks involved separate components (e.g. the light pointer involving the VSSP and verbal task involving the …show more content…
Using an fMRI scan, Bunge measured brain activity and found that, unsurprisingly, there was more when carrying out a dual-task. This showed that increased attentional demands are reflected in brain activity.
Furthermore, evidence for the articulatory process by Baddeley’s ‘Word length effect’ study, shows that long words aren’t remembered as easily as short because they cannot fit into the PL. It also showed that when given an articulatory suppression task, (e.g. repeating ‘the’ over and over again) you cant rehearse the shorter words quickly enough and the word-length effect disappears.
Baddeley also found that when participants were shown words and asked to recall them immediately, they did so much better for sentences than for unrelated words which supports the idea of the episodic buffer- an immediate memory store for items that aren’t visual or