The working model memory consists of 4 main parts: including the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad and episodic buffer - along with rehearsal mechanisms. The central executive is considered the most important of the working memory as it controls attention and coordinates the actions of the other components. Although it has a limited capacity, it can briefly store information. It can store information in any sense modality. The phonological loop has two parts: the articulatory control system or the inner voice, and the phonological store or the inner ear.
The components of the WMM are split into 3 main sections; Central executive, visuo-spatial scratch pad and phonological store. The Central executive is the system in overall charge which allocates information to the other subsystems. It is very flexible and can process information in any sensory modality. Also the central Executive can hold and manipulate information, and like other stores in WMM, it has a limited capacity. Visuo-spatial scratch pad is the inner eye, it is where you see it in your brain.
The experiment produces the primary effect, where many words are recalled from the beginning of the list, and the recency effect, where many words are also recalled from the end of the list, but not so many from the middle. This study also shows that there are separate short term and long term memory stores since the primary effect occurs because the words at the beginning of the list have been rehearsed, and so are transferred into the long term memory store. However, whilst this is going on, less attention is paid to the middle words and they tend to be lost unless they have some special significance to the individual. The words at the end of the list are well recalled because they are still fresh in the memory system unless there is a distractor task which causes this information to be lost through interference, displacement, or decay. This evidence can be seen as reliable since it was scientific, conducted in a laboratory, and produced quantative data that makes it easy to summarise and compare with other data.
The research carried out allowed us to confirm that using the method of loci would improve and an individual’s recall. Introduction The Multi-Store Model (MSM) of Memory was proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968 and claimed the memory system contained three structural components. Sensory memory (SM) stores information that is collected by our senses (sight, smell, hearing etc.). This information is received continually but the majority is ignored and only stored for a brief moment of time. At this point it is either disregarded or transferred to the short term memory (STM) store.
Outline and evaluate stages for memory improvement AO1 There are 3 stages for memory improvement. Verbal, visual and non-memory improvement. Within these 3 stages there are different types. For Verbal memory improvement there are acronym, acrostic, rhymes and chunking. These are ways that we verbally remember things for example chunking are when we put a long number that we need to remember into smaller groups of numbers that help us, an example of this would be a phone number where we group 11 digits into 3 groups in order for it to stay in our memory.
Because of the limited capacity of the STM, words from the middle of the list are thought to be lost completely or unavailable for recall. Case Study of K.F. - Shallice & Warrington (1970) I think that this study proves that the different parts of the multi-store model can be damaged separately because K.F's LTM was unaffected by the motorbike accident while his STM was severely damaged. Case Study of H.M. - Milner et al (1978) This study also supports the theory that the multi-store model can be affected as individual parts because while H.M's STM and LTM both worked almost normally, he lost the ability to transfer the information from the STM to the LTM, however he could recall information from the LTM to the
Outline and Evaluate the Working Memory Model The working memory model (WM) explains why we can do two different tasks at the same time, but not two similar tasks. It replaced the idea of a unitary short term memory (STM) In the working memory model information is passed from STM to the central executive and this decides if the information is visual or auditaory. Information is then passed to the corrersponding store. The central executive is a key componant of the WM. It directs information from STM to one of the "slave systems" It also has a very limited capacity and duration so can't attend to too many things at once.
The fourth component is the episodic buffer which holds visual and acoustic information from other components. This is also able to take information from the long term memory and this component was only added in 2000 when Baddely found out that amnesia patients couldn’t store of recall stories from their short term memory. The working memory model has been supported and evaluated by Baddely. He used a tracker task and participants had to follow a moving spot of light as well as looking at a capital ‘F’. He found that participants found simultaneous tracking and imagery hard to do, but they were able to do it with a visual task.
3. Question 6: Outline and evaluate either Multi-store model/Working Memory model Answer: Working memory model Baddeley and Hitch designed the Working memory model in 1974 to show how the short-term memory works. The Articulatory loop focuses on speech production and acoustic information. The central executive has a limited capacity; however it has overall control, is multi-modal, and has a range of responsibilities such as monitoring and correcting errors. It can also retrieve information by switching between storage and retrieval and is supported by the two separate slave systems.
Describe and evaluate the working model of memory The working model of memory consists of many components, these are the central executive, the phonological loop- which also involves the articulatory control system and the phonological store, the visuospatial sketchpad and the episodic buffer. The central executive is considered the most important part of working memory, because it controls attention and coordinates the actions of the other components, it can briefly store information, but has a limited capacity. The central executive can store information from any kind of code. The phonological loop consists of two parts, the articulatory control system and the phonological store, The articulatory control system rehearses information verbally and has a capacity of about 2 seconds. It is the system that you use to mentally rehearse information by repeating it over and over again, it is also known as the ‘inner voice’.