Outline and evaluate the model of working memory In this essay I am going outline what is working memory in terms of psychology and evaluate it in terms of both advantages and limitation of the working memory model. The fact that short-term memory contains both new information and information retrieved from long-term memory has led some psychologists to prefer the term ‘working memory’ (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974; Baddeley, 1986,1992) Working memory model is an alternative to the multi-store model; it is a far more complex explanation of short-term memory. Baddeley and Hitch argued that the short-term memory was made up of several subsystems, each of them have a specialized function, rather than the short-term memory model being a single inflexible store. According to Martin, G. N, Carlson, N.R & Buskist, W. (2006) “According to Baddeley, working memory is a short-term memory system that allows us to retain material for current use and not just for transport into long-term memory.” Baddeley suggested this short-term memory as having three independent components that allow us to store temporarily visuo-spatial material and verbal material. These components were so-called the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad and the Phonological Loop.
Describe and evaluate the Working Memory Model of Memory (12 marks) The working memory model by Baddeley and Hitch in 1974 is an alternative to the multi- store model, which was limited in its description of the STM. It consists of three main components, the first one being the central executive, which has overall control. The central executive is directs attention to two slave systems, the phonological loop and the visual-spatial sketchpad. The central executive has limited capacity but is able to process information from all the sensory systems, e.g. vision, hearing, etc.
The Rehearsal Loop allows the rehearsal of information resulting in it being transferred into either the Long Term Store, or due to maintenance rehearsal, the information will be able to stay stored in the Short Term Store. The main characteristics of the Short Term Store are its size, which is limited and can only store up to seven pieces of information (plus or minus 2) at a given time, its duration, which is less than thirty seconds, and its encoding, favouring acoustic sounds (recognising information by how its sounds). The main and contrasting characteristics of the Long Term Store are again its size, which is unlimited, its duration, which is a lifetime, and its encoding, favouring semantic forms (recognising information by its meaning). The theory of the Multi Store Model claims that the memory consists of two separate storage areas. Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) came up with the theory of the “Serial Positioning experiment”.
We have sensory memory stores where information from the outside world is taken in unconsciously so if it is not looked at consciously it can be lost via decay as the duration is very short (possibly up to 2 seconds). It is a brief memory of things we have seen (iconic memory) and things we have heard (echoic memory) which help us make sense of the world. We can hold sounds in our sensory memory for a couple of seconds allowing us to hear whole sentences in speech. The majority of information is lost but what we pay attention to is passed on to short term memory. All of our senses – sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing – have a separate store within sensory memory.
A model of memory is Atinson and Sriffrins 1968 multi- store model of memory. The multi-store model of memory shows that memory goes into seperate stores, first being the sensory memory where the sense organ picks up the sense, through iconic and echoc storage ecoding, the duration of the sensory memory is incredibly short of only lasting between a 1/4 and a 1/2 of a second. if attented to, the information from the sensory memory will pass to the short term memory. Once in the short term memory, the information is encoded mainy auditory and the duration is very short, with it only lasting about 0-18 seconds. its said that the capacity of stm is 7+-2 chunks, as millers study 1956 showed as showed the stm could hold approximatley 7 chunks of information at one time.
12 marks The multi store model of memory was created by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968. Their findings showed that information first enters into the sensory memory which is very short lived. The sensory memory can be produced in two ways Iconic (visual) or Echoic (auditory). When the information has caught the attention of the brain it enters the short term memory which lasts for up to 20 seconds this was discovered in an experiment by Psychologist Peterson in 1959. In addition information in the short term memory store is encoded acoustically; this theory is supported by Conrad’s 1964 case study where an experiment was conducted that confirmed Atkinson and Shiffrin’s theory that the STM encodes information acoustically.
Kahneman (as cited in Edgar, 2007) explains it in the limited capacity theory of attention. According to it, “the brain contains limited-capacity central processor responsible for analyzing incoming information and integrating it to information already held in memory” (Edgar, 2007, pp.11). Thus, when a person tries to do many things at once interference can occur if those things compete for the same pool of resources. However, Macleod (as cited in Edgar, 2007) showed that it is possible to do two things at once without interference. In his study, participants had to carry out a visual and an auditory task and respond to them by saying ‘bip’.
KF showed very poor digit span (usually less than 2 items), but good performance on tasks that seemed to indicate an intact long-term store. For example, he was still able to store new information. In fact he could learn a 10 word sequence in fewer trials than normal controls and still retained seven of the 10 items some months later. The multi-store model predicts that this should not be possible since an intact STM is required to transfer information to LTM. We have enormous amounts of information in LTM even though we have probably not rehearsed much of it.
They found that participants recalled more words from the beginning (the primacy effect) and the end of a list of words (the recency effect). This suggests that the earlier words in the list had been transferred to long term memory and that words later in the list were still in short term memory. Terry (2005) tested recall for serial position effects in the recall of television adverts which supports earlier laboratory experiments. Case studies such as the case of Clive Wearing have also been used to support the existence of different memory
Multi-Store Model of Memory The multi-store model is the explanation for how memories are processed. It explains why only a few things are remembered and why some things are remembered and others aren’t. Atkinson and Schiffrin were the first to describe the multi-store model. They designed a simple diagram to show the multi-store memory: Sensory memory Environmental Stimuli Attention Short-term Memory Maintenance Rehearsal Information Retrieval Elaborate Rehearsal Long-term Memory Retrieval Sensory memory Environmental Stimuli Attention Short-term Memory Maintenance Rehearsal Information Retrieval Elaborate Rehearsal Long-term Memory Retrieval The Multi-store Model has 3 different places for memory storage. Information passes from store to store in a linear way and there are different explanations for forgetting in each store The first store is where sensory memory is processed.