The

Working
Memory
Model
Describe the main
components in the
working memory
model.
Work this out in your heads in silence...

• 17 + 29 + 30 = 76

• 43 + 12 + 23 = 78

• What process do you use to work

these out?
 Baddeley & Hitch (1974)
• Believed memory is not just one store but a
number of different stores:
– 2 visual tasks = poorer performance but 1 visual and 1
verbal means no interruption

• Focused on STM ONLY and believed it was not a

unitary store
• LTM as a more passive store that holds previously
learned material for use by the STM when
needed.
 Model

• We will now look at the working memory

model…whilst exercising your memories!
– In groups of 4
– A3 paper each
– Each take turn at looking at the model for 30 seconds
then report back to group. Group must try and draw
model from reports – reporter CANNOT draw!
• The Working Memory Model (Baddeley &
Hitch, 1974)
 Central executive
• Key component in model
• Functions:
– Direct attention to tasks
– Determine how resources
(slave systems) are allocated.

• Limited Capacity
 Phonological Loop
• Limited Capacity

• Deals with auditory information and

preserves word order

• Baddeley (1986) further subdivided it into

– Phonological store ( holds words heard)
– Articulatory process ( holds words heard/seen
and silently repeated ( looped) like an inner
voice.
 Visuo-spatial sketch pad
• Visual and/or spatial information stored
here
– Visual = what things look like
– Spatial = relationships between things
• Limited capacity

• Logie (1995) suggested subdivision:

– Visuo-cache (store)
– Inner scribe for spatial relations.
 Episodic Buffer
• Baddeley ( 2000) added episodic buffer as he
realised model needed a more general store.
• Slave systems deal with specific types of information.

• Central executive has no storage capacity

• Buffer extra storage system but with limited capacity.
• Integrates information from all other areas.
 Sum it up...
• We’ve seen the model now let’s talk
about the model.....

– Write ONE question about the working

memory model (that you know the answer
to).
– You will go and test the class and see how
well they have understood/remembered
the model.
Evidence for the Working
Memory Model.
• To test the idea of more than one component,
Baddeley and Hitch devised the dual task
technique.

• Let’s see what happened…..

 Your turn!
• You will now complete a dual task technique ( one that was
used by Baddeley and Hitch).

• Repeat the numbers below aloud whilst ticking the true/false

answers

482917
• 1: B is followed by A BATrue/False
• 2: A is preceded by B ABTrue/False
• 3: A is not followed by B BATrue/False
• 4: B follows A ABTrue/False
• 5: B does not follow A BATrue/False
• 6: B is not followed by A ABTrue/False
• 7: A follows B ABTrue/False
• 8: B is not preceded by A ABTrue/False
• 9: A is not followed by B BATrue/False
• 10: B does not precede A ABTrue/False
 Their research (Baddeley & Hitch)…..
• Asked participants to perform a reasoning task whilst
simultaneously reciting aloud a list of 6 digits.

• If digit span is really a measure of STM capacity,

participants would be expected to show impaired
performance on the reasoning task because their STM
would be fully occupied.

• However, found Participants made few errors on

either, though the speed was slightly slower.
 Summarise
1) What did they do in the experiment (HINT: it’s
what you did!!)

2) How does this support evidence for the

working memory model?
 Evidence for the central executive
• Baddeley (1996) investigated selective attention and switching
retrieval plans. Asked participants to generate random strings of
digits on a keyboard (this is quite hard as you have to pay close
attention in order to avoid some kind of pattern emerging).
• This was carried out alone or alongside another task such as
reciting the alphabet, counting from one or alternating between
letters and numbers (A1, B2, C3).
• The generated digit string became increasingly less random in
Condition 3 where participants had to switch from alphabet to
numbers at the same time.
• Baddeley concluded that both the random number generation
task and the alternation task were competing for the same
central executive resources.
 More evidence for CE
• Individuals had to perform two tasks simultaneously
(dual task) rather than one after the other (single task).

• Bunge et al (2000) used fMRI to see which parts of the

brain were most active when participants were doing
two tasks (reading a sentence and recalling the final
word in each sentence).

• The same brain areas (pre-frontal cortex) were active in

either dual or single task conditions but there was
significantly more activation in dual task condition
Evidence for the phonological loop and articulatory process

• Remember the following:

• Harm
• Twice
• Calm
• Share
• Tree
• Book
• Sun
• Four
• Key
• Short
 Recall them!
• How many did you get right?
• Harm
• Twice
• Calm
• Share
• Tree
• Book
• Sun
• Four
• Key
• Short
And again..recall these:
• Association
• Representative
• Discouragement
• Meaningfulness
• Suppression
• Enhancing
• Component
• Performances
• Forgetting
• Damaging
 Recall them!
• How many did you get right?
• Association
•
The Representative
phonological loop
• Discouragement
explains why the word-
• Meaningfulness
length effect occurs – the
• Suppression
fact that people cope
• Enhancing
better with short words
• Component
than long words in working
• Performances
memory (STM).
• Forgetting
• Damaging
 Word- length effect
• It seems that the phonological loop holds the
amount of information that you can say in 1.5 -
2 seconds (Baddeley et al, 1975).

• This makes it hard to remember a list of long

words such as ‘association’ and ‘representative’
compared to shorter words like ‘harm’ and
‘twice’ and therefore inhibits rehearsal of
longer words!
 BUT…articulatory process
• Word length effect disappears if a person is given an
articulatory suppression task (‘the, the, the’ while
reading the words).

• The repetitive task ties up the articulatory process and

means you can’t rehearse the shorter words more
quickly than the longer ones, so the word length effect
disappears.

• This provided evidence for……

 Evidence for the visuo-spatial sketchpad
• Baddeley et al (1975) demonstrated the existence of the visuo-
spatial sketchpad.
• Participants were given a visual tracing task (they had to track a
moving light with a pointer). At the same time they were given
one of two other tasks; task 1 was to describe all the angles on
the letter F, task 2 was to perform a verbal task. Task 1 was very
difficult, but not task 2, presumably because the second task
involved two different components (or slave systems).
• This is also evidence related to the effects of doing two tasks
using the same or different components. This was a highly
controlled laboratory experiment using a repeated measures
design to eliminate individual differences. However, the task was
rather artificial.
 Also….
• Logie (1995) Visual cache stores information about visual form and colour
and the inner scribe processes spatial and movement information.

• Klauer and Zhao (2004) supported this idea by asking participants to carry out
one of two primary tasks, either a visual task or a spatial task. At the same
time as doing this task they were asked to do either a spatial interference
task, a visual interference task or no secondary task (control condition). They
found that performance of the spatial task was much poorer for people who
were simultaneously carrying out the spatial distracter task than for people
who were doing the visual distracter task and vice versa.

• Studies using positron emission tomography (PET) scans have also provided
evidence for separate spatial and visual systems. There appears to be more
activity in the left half of the brain of people carrying out visual working
memory tasks but more in the right half of the brain during spatial task.
 Evidence for the episodic buffer
• Baddeley et al (1987)
– PPTs were shown words and then immediate recall
– Recall was much better for sentences (related
words) than unrelated

• Supports idea of ‘general’ memory store that

draws on LTM (semantics)
Evidence from brain damaged patients
• Case of KF (Shallice and Warrington, 1970)
showed that STM works independently of LTM

• STM forgetting of auditory information was

much greater than that of visual stimuli. Thus
his brain damage seemed to be restricted to
the phonological loop.
– Letters
– Meaningful sounds…ring ring
 Also….
• SC - generally good learning abilities with the
exception of being unable to learn word pairs
that were presented out loud. This suggests
damage to the phonological loop (Trojano and
Grossi, 1995)

• LH - had been involved in a road accident.

Performed better on spatial tasks than those
involving visual imagery (Farah et al, 1988). This
suggests separate visual and spatial systems.
 Homework..

Fill in the necessary words of your glossary lists

with the information you have learned on the
working memory model!
 Sum it up...
• We’ve seen the model now lets talk
about the model.....

– Write ONE question about the working

memory model (that you know the answer
too).
– You will go and test the class and see how
well they have understood/remembered
the model.