Understanding the Working Memory Model

THE WORKING MEMORY MODEL Baddely & HItch (1974) * Believed short-term memory is not just a single component, but rather the interaction of multiple different components that work together to form a holistic memory store * Focused on The STM only * LTM is a passive store that holds previously learned material for use by the STM when needed * Note: that Baddeley and Hitch’s model is not a model of the complete process of memory, but just of short-term memory Model diagrams Screen Shot 2018-02-03 at 07.46.08.png Central executive * The central executive is an attention control system that monitors and coordinates the operations of the sub-systems of processing and storage. * The central executive is the most important part of the model because it is seen as a kind of CEO of the memory system, that is, it decides how and when the sub-systems are used. * The central executive has the capacity to focus attention, divide attention between two or more sources, and switch attention from one task to another. The central executive has limited capacity, which basically means that you cannot attend to a lot of things at the same time. * It is also modality-free, which means that it can process any sensory information, whether it be auditory or visual. Phonological loop * Limited capacity * Deals with auditory information and language written and spoken * Baddely(1986) further subdivided it into the phonological store(holds words heard) and the articulatory control system, or inner voice, which can hold information in a verbal form. This happens when you try to remember a telephone number and repeat it to yourself. The articulatory loop is also believed to hold words ready for cognitive tasks, for example as you prepare to speak. * The phonological store can receive information directly from sensory memory in the form of auditory material, from LTM in the form of verbal information, and from the articulatory control system. The phonological loop has significant implications for a wide range of everyday activities. Actually, any activity that requires retention of a verbal sequence such as remembering a new telephone number long enough to dial it, repeating a foreign word, or counting objects would rely on the phonological loop. * * The phonological stores holds auditory memory traces. Research shows that a memory trace can only last from 1.5 to 2 seconds if it is not rehearsed by the articulatory control system. The phonological store can receive information directly from sensory memory in the form of auditory material, from LTM in the form of verbal information, and from the articulatory control system.- so it is not the number of items that can be held in stm that is limited but how long the words are that affects whether or not you can remember- the longer the word takes to verbalize the harder it is the repeat and hold in memeory. Articulatory suppression Research using articulatory suppression lends support to the working memory model. Articulatory suppression means that participants are asked to repeat a word such as 'the' or a number such as 'one' while they memorize a list of words. Such studies show that concurrent tasks decrease the accuracy of recall of the information because the phonological rehearsal system is overloaded(your inner voice is unable to repeat the changing words as often). The same would happen if you were asked to read prose and at the same time repeat a word or a number as described above because both tasks depend on the phonological loop. Visuo-spatial sketchpads The visuospatial sketchpad is the visual component of STM and could be called the inner eye. It is a temporary store for visual and spatial information from either sensory memory or LTM. Visual processing includes the storage and manipulation of visual patterns and spatial movements in two or three dimensions. The visuospatial sketchpad helps us remember not only what visual information is important, but also where it is. This is important when we have to find our way around the house and in visual imagery, for example, when trying to remember where we left our mobile phone. The episodic buffer This buffer temporarily holds several sources of information active at the same time, while you consider what is needed in the present situation. This means - auditory and visual information together, as well as information from LTM. Imagine yourself consciously trying to recall the details of a landscape or the sound of your favorite band while you are telling somebody else about it. According to Baddeley, they will appear via the episodic buffer. The role of the buffer is to act as a temporary and passive display store until the information is needed - much like a television screen - but it has limited capacity. Baddeley argues that the episodic buffer is responsible for our conscious awareness. Landry & Bartling (2011) Aim: Landry and Bartling (2011) conducted an experiment using articulatory suppression to test the Working Memory Model. The aim was to investigate if articulatory suppression would influence the recall of a written list of phonologically dissimilar letters in serial recall. Sample + Research Method: The participants consisted of 34 undergraduate psychology students. The researchers used an independent sample design. Procedure: The participants were tested individually. In the experimental group, participants first saw a list of letters that they had to recall while saying the numbers '1' and '2' at a rate of two numbers per second (an articulatory suppression task). The control group saw the list of letters but did not carry out the articulatory suppression task. There were ten lists each consisting of a series of 7 letters randomly constructed from the letters F, K, L, M, R, X and Q. These letters were chosen because they don't sound similar. The experimenter presented one letter series at a time. The participants received an answer sheet with seven blanks in each row. Before the experiment started, each participant viewed one practice list to become acquainted with the procedure. In the control group, the experimenter showed participants a printed list for five seconds, instructed them to wait for another five seconds, and then instructed them to write the correct order of the letters on the answer sheet as accurately as possible. This was repeated ten times. In the experimental group, participants received instructions to repeatedly say the numbers '1' and '2' at a rate of two numbers per second from the time of presentation of the list until the time they filled in the answer sheet. This was also repeated ten times. Each trial was scored for the accuracy of recall. The trial was scored as correct if the letters were in the correct position. The experimenter then calculated the average percent correct recall for both groups. Findings: The results showed that the scores from the experimental group were much lower than the scores from the control group. The mean percent of accurate recall in the control group was 76% compared to a mean of 45% in the experimental group. Although the difference in the means were large, the standard deviations were nearly identical with SD = 0.13 for the control group and SD = 0.14 for the experimental group. A T-test was calculated and found a significant difference of p ≤ 0.01. Conclusion/link: The results supported the experimental hypothesis as the mean percent of accurate recall in the control group was higher than the mean percent of accurate recall in the experimental group. In line with the Working Memory Model, articulatory suppression is preventing rehearsal in the phonological loop because of overload. This resulted in difficulty in memorizing the letter strings for participants in the experimental conditions whereas the participants in the control condition did not experience such overload. Landry and bartling support the working memory model showing how STM is comprised of different sub-units through using articulatory suppression to show the phonological loop function of rehearsing auditory traces and its limited capacity. The study found that the mean percent of accurate recall in the control group was higher than the mean percent of accurate recall in the experimental group. In line with the Working Memory Model, articulatory suppression prevents rehearsal in the phonological loop because of overload. This highlights the clear feature of the limited capacity of the phonological loop in the working memory model. This resulted in difficulty in memorizing the letter strings for participants in the experimental conditions undergoing aculatory suppression. Therefore it shows the working memory model through supporting the idea of separate compartments within the STM Evaluation The study is a well-controlled study with a high level of internal validity. A cause-and-effect relationship can be determined. The controls included the large number of repeats as they allowed the researchers to highlight any anomalies and going reliable data form the experiment. They were also abel to control and other distractions which could have split the particicpnats attention form the articulatory suppression task, ensuring that the difference in recall between the experimental and control group was due to the overload and innablitity for rehearsal in the phonological loop substore.This ultimately showed the existence of a seprereate store within the STM which has a limited capacity when dealing with auditory and VERBAL information However, the nature of the study is rather artificial and thus lacks ecological validity as thai was a highly unusual task that people don’t do in daily life and isolated the sub store of the central executive , it is hard to for sure say that the phonological loop works independently like this in real life situations, when it is overloaded The study supports the Working Memory Model and is easily replicable. The findings are, therefore, more genralizable to the wider population as they have a lower margin for error allowing for us to concluded that these trends in particiopnats accuracy are due to overloading of information in the phonological loop store in the STM Baddley et al (1975) Method : Five list lengths were used, comprising sequences of four, five, six, seven, and eight words. Eight sequences of each length were made up from the pool of short words, and eight from the pool of long words. In both cases, sequences were generated by sampling at random without replacement from the appropriate pool of words. All subjects were tested on both long and short words, and all received the sequences in ascending order of list length, beginning with sequences of four words and proceeding up to the point at which they failed on all eight sequences, at which point testing on the pool of words in question was discontinued. Half the subjects began with the pool of long words and half with the short words. The words were read to the subject at a 1.5-sec rate, with each list preceded by the spoken warning "Ready." Subjects were allowed 15 sec to recall the words verbally in the order presented. Subjects were allowed to familiarize themselves with the two pools of words at the beginning of the experiment, and these two pools remained visible to the subjects on prompt cards throughout the experiment. Several different prompt cards with the words in differing orders were used in this and subsequent experiments to prevent the subjects from using location on the card as a cue. The subjects were eight undergraduate or postgraduate students from the University of Stirling. Results and Discussion : Performance was scored in terms of the number of sequences recalled completely correctly (i.e., all the items were correct and in the correct order). Graph below shows the level of performance at each sequence length for the long and the short words. There is a very clear advantage to the short word set which occurs at all sequence lengths and is characteristic of all eight subjects tested. There is little doubt that the sample of short words used results in better memory span performance than the sample of long words.The researchers found that word length had a significant impact on memory capacity. Link : Participants were able to recall more of both the shorter words and the shorter lists.This suggests that all of the inputs were being processed by the phonological loop, and that it has certain limits. Summary: The aim of Experiment I was to investigate the influence of word length on memory span and explore the relative importance of the number of syllables and temporal duration of a word as determinants of span. The experiment compared the memory span of subjects for sets of long and short words in English. The procedure involved presenting two sets of words to the participants. One set consisted of eight monosyllabic words (e.g., sum, hate, harm), while the other set comprised longer words. The participants were then asked to recall as many words as possible in the order they were presented. The findings of the experiment showed that memory span was influenced by word length. Participants had a higher recall for sets of short words compared to sets of long words. This suggests that the length of a word affects its memorability. The experiment also aimed to explore whether the underlying memory system is time-based or item-based. However, the summary does not provide specific findings regarding this aspect. Evaluation The possible strengths of this experiment include the controlled manipulation of word length and the use of a recall task to measure memory span. By comparing sets of short and long words, the researchers were able to investigate the impact of word length on memory performance and could be used to understand how the length of words could reach the capacity of the phonological loop before being overloaded. Thai sows support for the working memory model in that it is able to display the limited capacity of the phonological loop and that once it is overloaded the accuracy of recall drastically decreases. One potential weakness of the experiment is that it does not provide a detailed analysis of the influence of syllable count and temporal duration on memory span as we don’t truly know the capacity of the phonological loop in terms of the length and number of words which people may need to rehearse to remember them. Additionally, the summary does not mention the sample size or characteristics of the participants, which could limit the generalizability of the findings. In conclusion, Experiment I demonstrated that word length has an effect on memory span, with shorter words being better recalled than longer words. However, further research is needed to explore the role of syllable count, temporal duration, and the underlying memory system in more depth. Working Memory Model Evaluation: Strength: * Working Memory tells us how to improve our memory in some situations. If you have to encode something in one particular way (like listening to a radio broadcast) then remove competing information (by muting the TV). However, it suggests you can concentrate on two differently coded sources at once – so you can do revision by copying a mind map while listening to a podcast. * The model may have application to helping people with dementia. Using the Episodic Buffer seems to help people who cannot encoded memories in LTM or have trouble retrieving LTM. This means using Cognitive Stimulation: playing an old song and asking the patient to tell the story of how they first heard it. Weaknesses: * The model is based on lab experiments involving dual tasks. These are quite artificial. In real life, even at parties and events, you use your other senses (such as paying attention to body language or lip-reading when someone speaks). If the experiments into Working Memory lack ecological validity, then the model won’t explain how memory works in real life situations. * The model is based on lab experiments involving dual tasks. These are quite artificial. In real life, even at cocktail parties, you use your other senses (such as paying attention to body language or lip-reading when someone speaks). If the experiments into Working Memory lack ecological validity, then the model won’t explain how memory works in real-life situations. LAQ Theory: → general description → details about each subunit i.e capacity, duration, function → why is it relevant e.g responsible for our consciousness etc Topic Sentence 1: One way in which we can investigate the working memory model is through using articulatory suppression. Give definition: → Study 1: Landry and Bartling (2011) * The study shows how overloading the ohonologicla loop of the WMM leads to less accurate recal due to the recued opportunity for rehearsal * Highlights the importance of maintenance rehearsal in the DTM as a whole unit * Shows the string construct validity of the model as it depict how the sub units work togtherbto perform the overall function of the STM → study evaluation Topic Sentence 2: Another way in which the WMM can be tested is through varying the length or series of words and the number of words in the aries themselves → Study 2: Baddeley et al (1975) * The study showed the limited capacity of the phonological loop, since the more words in teh series the less likely they were to correctly recall each word in the series in the correct order * This may show how the model can be applicable in different situations, such as how it can be used to predict whether people will remember what they hear and see based on the number of items and how long each of them is due to their processing by the phonological loop → Study evaluation → Additional TEACUP Conclusion

Central executive 
	* The central executive is an attention control system that monitors and coordinates the operations of the sub-systems of processing and storage. 
* The central executive is the most important part of the model because it is seen as a kind of CEO of the memory system, that is, it decides how and when the sub-systems are used. 
* The central executive has the capacity to focus attention, divide attention between two or more sources, and switch attention from one task to another. The central executive has limited capacity, which basically means that you cannot attend to a lot of things at the same time.
*  It is also modality-free, which means that it can process any sensory information, whether it be auditory or visual.
	Phonological loop 
	* Limited capacity

* Deals with auditory information and language written and spoken

* Baddely(1986) further subdivided it into the phonological store(holds words heard) and the articulatory control system, or inner voice, which can hold information in a verbal form. This happens when you try to remember a telephone number and repeat it to yourself. The articulatory loop is also believed to hold words ready for cognitive tasks, for example as you prepare to speak.

* The phonological store can receive information directly from sensory memory in the form of auditory material, from LTM in the form of verbal information, and from the articulatory control system. The phonological loop has significant implications for a wide range of everyday activities. Actually, any activity that requires retention of a verbal sequence such as remembering a new telephone number long enough to dial it, repeating a foreign word, or counting objects would rely on the phonological loop.
* * The phonological stores  holds auditory memory traces. Research shows that a memory trace can only last from 1.5 to 2 seconds if it is not rehearsed by the articulatory control system. The phonological store can receive information directly from sensory memory in the form of auditory material, from LTM in the form of verbal information, and from the articulatory control system.- so it is not the number of items that can be held  in stm that is limited but how long the words are that affects whether or not you can remember- the longer the word takes to verbalize the harder it is the repeat and hold in memeory. 
	Articulatory suppression 
	Research using articulatory suppression lends support to the working memory model. 
Articulatory suppression means that participants are asked to repeat a word such as 'the' or a number such as 'one' while they memorize a list of words. Such studies show that concurrent tasks decrease the accuracy of recall of the information because the phonological rehearsal system is overloaded(your inner voice is unable to repeat the changing words as often).

The same would happen if you were asked to read prose and at the same time repeat a word or a number as described above because both tasks depend on the phonological loop.
	Visuo-spatial sketchpads
	The visuospatial sketchpad is the visual component of STM and could be called the inner eye. It is a temporary store for visual and spatial information from either sensory memory or LTM. Visual processing includes the storage and manipulation of visual patterns and spatial movements in two or three dimensions. The visuospatial sketchpad helps us remember not only what visual information is important, but also where it is. This is important when we have to find our way around the house and in visual imagery, for example, when trying to remember where we left our mobile phone.
	The episodic buffer 
	This buffer temporarily holds several sources of information active at the same time, while you consider what is needed in the present situation. This means - auditory and visual information together, as well as information from LTM.  Imagine yourself consciously trying to recall the details of a landscape or the sound of your favorite band while you are telling somebody else about it. According to Baddeley, they will appear via the episodic buffer. The role of the buffer is to act as a temporary and passive display store until the information is needed - much like a television screen - but it has limited capacity.  Baddeley argues that the episodic buffer is responsible for our conscious awareness.

Landry & Bartling (2011)
	Aim: 
Landry and Bartling (2011) conducted an experiment using articulatory suppression to test the Working Memory Model. The aim was to investigate if articulatory suppression would influence the recall of a written list of phonologically dissimilar letters in serial recall.
Sample + Research Method: 
The participants consisted of 34 undergraduate psychology students. The researchers used an independent sample design.

Procedure: 
The participants were tested individually. In the experimental group, participants first saw a list of letters that they had to recall while saying the numbers '1' and '2' at a rate of two numbers per second (an articulatory suppression task). The control group saw the list of letters but did not carry out the articulatory suppression task.
There were ten lists each consisting of a series of 7 letters randomly constructed from the letters F, K, L, M, R, X and Q. These letters were chosen because they don't sound similar. The experimenter presented one letter series at a time. The participants received an answer sheet with seven blanks in each row. Before the experiment started, each participant viewed one practice list to become acquainted with the procedure.
In the control group, the experimenter showed participants a printed list for five seconds, instructed them to wait for another five seconds, and then instructed them to write the correct order of the letters on the answer sheet as accurately as possible. This was repeated ten times. In the experimental group, participants received instructions to repeatedly say the numbers '1' and '2' at a rate of two numbers per second from the time of presentation of the list until the time they filled in the answer sheet. This was also repeated ten times. 
Each trial was scored for the accuracy of recall. The trial was scored as correct if the letters were in the correct position. The experimenter then calculated the average percent correct recall for both groups.
Findings:
The results showed that the scores from the experimental group were much lower than the scores from the control group. The mean percent of accurate recall in the control group was 76% compared to a mean of 45% in the experimental group. Although the difference in the means were large, the standard deviations were nearly identical with SD = 0.13 for the control group and SD = 0.14 for the experimental group. A T-test was calculated and found a significant difference of p ≤ 0.01.
Conclusion/link:
The results supported the experimental hypothesis as the mean percent of accurate recall in the control group was higher than the mean percent of accurate recall in the experimental group. In line with the Working Memory Model, articulatory suppression is preventing rehearsal in the phonological loop because of overload. This resulted in difficulty in memorizing the letter strings for participants in the experimental conditions whereas the participants in the control condition did not experience such overload.

Landry and bartling support the working memory model showing how STM is comprised of different sub-units through using articulatory suppression to show the phonological loop function of rehearsing auditory traces and its limited capacity. The study found that the mean percent of accurate recall in the control group was higher than the mean percent of accurate recall in the experimental group. In line with the Working Memory Model, articulatory suppression prevents rehearsal in the phonological loop because of overload. This highlights the clear feature of the limited capacity of the phonological loop in the working memory model.
This resulted in difficulty in memorizing the letter strings for participants in the experimental conditions undergoing aculatory suppression. Therefore it shows the working memory model through supporting the idea of separate compartments within the STM

Evaluation 
	The study is a well-controlled study with a high level of internal validity. A cause-and-effect relationship can be determined. The controls included the large number of repeats as they allowed the researchers to highlight any anomalies and going reliable data form the experiment. They were also abel to control and other distractions which could have split the particicpnats attention form the articulatory suppression task, ensuring that the difference in recall between the experimental and control group was due to the overload and innablitity for  rehearsal in the phonological loop substore.This ultimately showed the existence of a seprereate store within the STM  which has a limited capacity when dealing with auditory and VERBAL information 
However, the nature of the study is rather artificial and thus lacks ecological validity as thai was a highly unusual task that people don’t do in daily life and isolated the sub store of the central executive , it is hard to for sure say that the phonological loop works independently like this in real life situations, when it is overloaded
The study supports the Working Memory Model and is easily replicable.  The findings are, therefore, more genralizable to the wider population as they have a lower margin for error allowing for us to concluded that these trends in particiopnats accuracy are due to overloading of information in the phonological loop store in the STM

Baddley et al (1975)
	Method : 
 Five list lengths were used, comprising sequences of four, five, six, seven, and eight words. Eight sequences of each length were made up from the pool of short words, and eight from the pool of long words. In both cases, sequences were generated by sampling at random without replacement from the appropriate pool of words.

All subjects were tested on both long and short words, and all received the sequences in ascending order of list length, beginning with sequences of four words and proceeding up to the point at which they failed on all eight sequences, at which point testing on the pool of words in question was discontinued. Half the subjects began with the pool of long words and half with the short words. The words were read to the subject at a 1.5-sec rate, with each list preceded by the spoken warning "Ready." Subjects were allowed 15 sec to recall the words verbally in the order presented. Subjects were allowed to familiarize themselves with the two pools of words at the beginning of the experiment, and these two pools remained visible to the subjects on prompt cards throughout the experiment. Several different prompt cards with the words in differing orders were used in this and subsequent experiments to prevent the subjects from using location on the card as a cue. The subjects were eight undergraduate or postgraduate students from the University of Stirling.

Results and Discussion : 
Performance was scored in terms of the number of sequences recalled completely correctly (i.e., all the items were correct and in the correct order). Graph below shows the level of performance at each sequence length for the long and the short words. There is a very clear advantage to the short word set which occurs at all sequence lengths and is characteristic of all eight subjects tested.

There is little doubt that the sample of short words used results in better memory span performance than the sample of long words.The researchers found that word length had a significant impact on memory capacity.  
Link :

Participants were able to recall more of both the shorter words and the shorter lists.This suggests that all of the inputs were being processed by the phonological loop, and that it has certain limits.

Summary:

The aim of Experiment I was to investigate the influence of word length on memory span and explore the relative importance of the number of syllables and temporal duration of a word as determinants of span. The experiment compared the memory span of subjects for sets of long and short words in English.

The procedure involved presenting two sets of words to the participants. One set consisted of eight monosyllabic words (e.g., sum, hate, harm), while the other set comprised longer words. The participants were then asked to recall as many words as possible in the order they were presented.

The findings of the experiment showed that memory span was influenced by word length. Participants had a higher recall for sets of short words compared to sets of long words. This suggests that the length of a word affects its memorability.

The experiment also aimed to explore whether the underlying memory system is time-based or item-based. However, the summary does not provide specific findings regarding this aspect.

Evaluation 
	The possible strengths of this experiment include the controlled manipulation of word length and the use of a recall task to measure memory span. By comparing sets of short and long words, the researchers were able to investigate the impact of word length on memory performance and could be used to understand how the length of words could reach the capacity of the phonological loop before being overloaded. Thai sows support for the working memory model in that it is able to display the limited capacity of the phonological loop and that once it is overloaded the accuracy of recall drastically decreases.

One potential weakness of the experiment is that it does not provide a detailed analysis of the influence of syllable count and temporal duration on memory span as we don’t truly know the capacity of the phonological loop in terms of the length and number of words which people may need to rehearse to remember them. Additionally, the summary does not mention the sample size or characteristics of the participants, which could limit the generalizability of the findings.

In conclusion, Experiment I demonstrated that word length has an effect on memory span, with shorter words being better recalled than longer words. However, further research is needed to explore the role of syllable count, temporal duration, and the underlying memory system in more depth.

Working Memory Model Evaluation: 
Strength:
* Working Memory tells us how to improve our memory in some situations. If you have to encode something in one particular way (like listening to a radio broadcast) then remove competing information (by muting the TV). However, it suggests you can concentrate on two differently coded sources at once – so you can do revision by copying a mind map while listening to a podcast.

* The model may have application to helping people with dementia. Using the Episodic Buffer seems to help people who cannot encoded memories in LTM or have trouble retrieving LTM. This means using Cognitive Stimulation: playing an old song and asking the patient to tell the story of how they first heard it.
Weaknesses: 
* The model is based on lab experiments involving dual tasks. These are quite artificial. In real life, even at parties and events, you use your other senses (such as paying attention to body language or lip-reading when someone speaks). If the experiments into Working Memory lack ecological validity, then the model won’t explain how memory works in real life situations.
* The model is based on lab experiments involving dual tasks. These are quite artificial. In real life, even at cocktail parties, you use your other senses (such as paying attention to body language or lip-reading when someone speaks). If the experiments into Working Memory lack ecological validity, then the model won’t explain how memory works in real-life situations.

LAQ
	Theory:
→ general description 
→ details about each subunit i.e capacity, duration, function 
→ why is it relevant e.g responsible for our consciousness etc

Topic Sentence 1: One way in which we can investigate the working memory model is through using articulatory suppression. Give definition: 
→ Study 1: Landry and Bartling (2011)
* The study shows how overloading the ohonologicla loop of the WMM leads to less accurate recal due to the recued opportunity for rehearsal 
* Highlights the importance of maintenance rehearsal in the DTM as a whole unit 
* Shows the string construct validity of the model as it depict how the sub units work togtherbto perform the overall function of the STM
→ study evaluation

Topic Sentence 2: Another way in which the WMM can be tested is through varying the length or series of words and the number of words in the aries themselves
→ Study 2: Baddeley et al (1975)
* The study showed the limited capacity of the phonological loop, since the more words in teh series the less likely they were to correctly recall each word in the series in the correct order
* This may show how the model can be applicable in different situations, such as how it can be used to predict whether people will remember what they hear and see based on the number of items and how long each of them is due to their processing by the phonological loop
→ Study evaluation

→ Additional TEACUP

Conclusion

Transcript for:Understanding the Working Memory Model

Transcript for:
Understanding the Working Memory Model