Alan Baddeley's Working Memory Model

People rely on incoming information and stored information to perform their everyday functions. However, humans have a natural capacity of how much information they can attain. We are unable to store all of our acquired information without different systems that organize our information. Working memory is one of these systems that temporarily holds and manages information for cognitive processing (119). Baddeley’s working memory model is made up of four components that allow for temporary information to be stored (109).

Code-focused skills consist of phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge. Phonological awareness is a wide-ranging skill that identifies and manipulates sounds in words, syllables, onsets, and rimes. Alphabet knowledge is the ability to identify the letters of the alphabet and link the letters with the sounds they denote (“What Works,”2009).

Phonemic awareness is an understanding of spoken language. Phonological awareness entails understanding of spoken language and involves tasks such as rhyming words; comparing initial sounds; determining the number of phonemes in a word; identifying two sections in a compound word and separating syllables. Phonemic awareness includes tasks of individual phonemes or within words such as blending, deleting, substituting and moving. Townend (2000) clarifies that phonological awareness is the accurate perception of all the individual sounds, or phonemes, within a spoken word. It also includes the perception of relationships between sounds, such as

Researchers such as Logie, Baddeley and Bunge generally agree that the short-term memory is made up of a number of components or subsystems. The working memory model has replaced the idea of a unitary store short-term memory as suggested by the multistore model. The working memory model explains a lot more and in a lot more detail than the multistore model. It makes sense a range of tasks- verbal reasoning, comprehension, reading, problem solving and visual and spatial processing, it also applies to real life tasks such as reading which involves the phonological loop subsystem, problem solving which involves the central executive and navigation which involves the visual and spatial subsystem. The Working Memory Model is supported by

According to Baddeley (2012), the phonological loop is assumed to comprise a short-term storage system that holds information in phonological form (the phonological store) together with a control process that maintains and rehearses information vocally or subvocally (the articulatory control process). Furthermore, spoken words enter the phonological store directly however, written material has to be recoding into phonological form before entering the phonological store (Repovs & Baddeley, 2006). In the phonological store, memory traces are assumed to decay in a few seconds however, a function of the articulatory control process is to refresh this memory trace by reciting the information subvocally which then re-enters the phonological store

Burgess and Hitch (1999) added to and tested the original model of the phonological loop. They created multiple lists: one with the combination of short and long words, one with short words, and one with long words. Burgess and Hitch predicted that the short list would have a higher recall rate, while the long list would take longer to memorize. However, the mixed list would take less time to recall but longer time to memorize (Burgess & Hitch,1999).

How does the phonological loop operate in normal functioning? What happens with people that have working memory impairment?

This article is about the development of phonological awareness. Phonological awareness is one of the three phonological processing abilities; the other two are phonological memory and phonological access to lexical storage. Phonological processing is the processing of the sounds of one’s native language. Phonological awareness is the degree of sensitivity to the sound structure of oral language; it is a critical component for learning to read alphabetic languages such as French. Phonological memory is when you code information in a sound based representational system for temporary storage; phonological access to lexical storage is the efficiency of retrieving phonological codes from memory. One of the causes of dyslexia is difficulty with

Further evidence for the existence of the phonological loop comes from Conrads and Hulls (1975 in Passer, 2009) experiment in which they examined the effect of phonological similarity. They found that serial recall in a list of similar sounding words tended to yield poorer results with participants finding it difficult to remember compared to words that sounded different. It has also been found that recall in semantically similar words tended to have little or no effect, supporting the idea that verbal information is transferred in a phonological manner in working memory. In addition, Vallar and Papagno (1995 in Smith, 2007) found that the phonological store in brain damaged patients were dysfunctional.

While reading the article, it goes to talk about the relationship between attention and working memory. Attention and working memory, they are very similar but different. There was an experiment that

Short term memory (STM) is the second process in the ever so popular Information Processing Model and it is the area where information is the most readily available, but also most susceptible to being forgotten (Baddeley, 1986). STM has a very limited capacity, and can usually only hold so much information, the magic formula for this being “7 +/- 2” (Insert source). The formula of plus or minus two, simply stated is that humans STM’s can only store five to nine items of information at a time. Research has also shown that there is trace decay theory for items being STM, where items are easily forgotten within seconds if they are not put through the articulatory loop (Baddeley, 1986). As described by Baddeley, the articulatory loop is rehearsal of items that are currently stored in the STM. If items are not mentally rehearsed, then they are lost. Baddeley was the first to coin the term articulatory loop, but most researchers use it interchangeably with the term phonological loop. The phonological loop is specific to rehearsing verbal information in order to

Historically, the development of cognitive models like the Baddeley and Hitch (1974 ) model of working memory and the Norman and Shallice (1986) model of supervisory attentional system have pointed out to the existence

Phonemic Awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with individual sounds in words (Phonemic Awareness, 2015). Often phonemic awareness is said to be the same thing as phonics, however they are completely different. Phonics is the understanding that there is a relationship between letters and sounds through written language; but phonemic awareness is the understanding that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words (Phonemic Awareness, 2015). Phonemic Awareness plays a part in the broader spectrum of phonological awareness; and just like phonics, phonological awareness can be mistaken for phonemic awareness as well. However, they are not the same because phonemic awareness is a smaller component to the much broader

Baddeley and Hitch’s model includes three main components., the central executive, phonological loop, and visual sketchpad. This model states that sensory input is regulated by the central executive which deals with spoken and written material,

Working memory is essential for problem solving and for completing cognitive tasks. Working memory is characterized into two components “short term” and “executive attention” (Underwood, 2016). Executive attention manages information form short-term memory; it blocks distractions from the focus of attention (Underwood, 2016). This can be compared to a net.