Comparing Working Memory And The Episodic Buffer

The central executive directs the flow of information. It functions more with delegating the way resources are used in cognitive tasks. The central executive also coordinates information from the person’s current environment with retrieval of their prior information (119). The phonological loop is used to carry out rehearsed maintained verbal material. It plays an important role in the acquisition of vocabulary, learning how to read, and comprehending language. The visuospatial sketchpad maintains material through visualization. The visuospatial sketchpad creates and manages our mental images. The episodic buffer is a temporary system that connects information from long term memory to working memory.

What makes our everyday life very simple? What helps us to know what is happening now, what we are thinking now and what we are doing now? We are aware of the present moment or any changes in this moment, and this ability helps us in functioning effectively to face immediate environmental changes in our everyday life. This ability is called the Working Memory. The term working memory was coined by Miller, Galanter, and Pribram in 1960 (Baddeley, 2003). It refers to the temporary storage in the brain for manipulation of necessary information to execute cognitive tasks. According to Baddeley and Hitch’s study (1974), working memory comprises three main components, a control system, the central executive and two storage systems, the

The multi-store model of memory (eg, Atkinson and Shiffrin 1968) claims the memory can be sectioned into three distinctive parts: sensory store, short-term store (STM) and long-term store (LTM). Eysenck and Keane (2005:190) states that data is first encountered by the sensory store, then depending on the attention given, is processed to the STM and finally - if rehearsed - continues to the LTM.

It is helpful to think of it as the system that you use to mentally rehearse information by repeating it over and over again4. And the Phonological Store (The Inner Ear – but not to be confused with the canals in your actual ear) The phonological store uses a sound based code to store information, but this information decays after about 2 seconds, unless it is rehearsed by the articulatory control system. The phonological store receives its input either directly from the ears or from long term memory. If you imagine your favourite piece of music you are using your phonological store.5 The phonological loop explains why the word length effect occurs – the fact that people cope better with short words than long words in working memory (short-term memory). It would appear that the phonological loop holds the amount of information that you can say within 2 seconds (Baddeley et al, 1975). This makes it hard to remember a list of long words such as ‘anthropomorphic’ and ‘representative’ compared to shorter words like ‘walk’ or ‘again’. The longer can’t be rehearsed on the phonological loop because they don’t fit (into the two second limit). But the word length effect goes away if a person is given an articulatory suppression task, for instance if you are asked to say ‘the the the…’ while reading a group of words. This repetitive task ties up the articulatory process and means you can’t rehearse the shorter words more quickly than the

Baddeley (2001) suggests a working memory system which consists of four components; a modality-free central executive, a phonological loop which holds information in speech based form, a visuo-spatial sketchpad and an episodic buffer which is the temporary storage system that holds and integrates information from the phonological loop, visuo-spatial sketchpad and long-term memory (Eysenck & Keane, 2005).

The visuo-spatial sketchpad when planned a spatial task and it saves memory temporarily. The episodic buffer is the general store, it integrates info from the central executive, the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad and forms long term store.

Another positive is the fact that it can be applied, or rather generalised to real life. For example in job interviews when we talk, or when people text and drive, and it can cause us to crash. Finally another strength of the working memory model is that is provides us an explanation for the brain damaged patients KF and SC. As it shows us logical evidence that there is other stores in memory, rather than the oversimplified view of the multi-store model. However, it does have its weakness, one such weakness is its only address short term memory, not long term memory, and therefore it is not a detailed model of memory, as it doesn 't address long term memory. Another weakness is the circular argument, as it makes it difficult to find fault with the working memory mode. The circular argument is that if two task cannot be done together, then it 's assumed that tis is because both of which are overloading on of the components in the working model. If two tasks can be done together, it 's assumed they are from different components of the working model, meaning the model can explain any results. Finally another weakness is the fact that the working memory model has been conducted in laboratories. Therefore it means that it may not be able to generalise these result into everyday

The term working memory is also known as short term memory. The working memory stores a limited quantity of information that is being processed at that time. The working memory also organizes current mental activities (Matlin, 2013). Its abilities consist of keeping selected memories active and available for varying cognitive tasks (Matlin,

(Abernathy, 2010). Working memory includes several components, for example, short-term storage, rehearsal, and executive processes operating on the contents of storage (Smith, 2000).

Working memory is the immediate memory for the finite amount of material an individual is processing at the moment. This memory capacity allows an individual to keep information attainable and active in order to use them in various cognitive tasks. Working memory is similar to the outdated term known as short- term memory. According to the working memory approach proposed by Baddeley (1996), this immediate memory is a multipart system consisting of four components known as the phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, central executive, and the episodic buffer. The component in question is the central executive, which is responsible for integration of the other components. Is the central executive an essential part of working memory or is it simply a glorified homunculus?

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.

They proposed the phonological loop had evolved for language acquisition and storage. Also their study found that the ability to pronounce a word places it in phonological storage, allowing you to recall the memory quicker (Baddeley, 1994). The phonological loop has been found to be a workspace for verbal information (Baddeley, 1994). Other studies have also found that the phonological loop works to process auditory information as well (Reisberg, 2013). The visuospatial sketchpad, (Baddeley, 1994) was used to recall a visual object. In the visuospatial sketchpad images are placed on different spatial maps, which then tied together with the spatial workspace on the visuospatial sketchpad. The decision maker of working memory is the central executive. It decides which memories are retrieved, what information you should focus on, how important the information is, and how to attain goals (Riesberg, 2013). Without the central executive, our thoughts and actions would be unorganized in our working memory (Riesberg, 2013). In order to reduce the workload of the central executive, and allow it to focus towards important tasks, the episodic buffer works to store the information gathered from the visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop (Baddeley, 1974). These models of memory show us how it is organized and operates, and there are other models of memory that go into how memory aids our

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

The Phonological loop and Visuospatial sketchpad deal with the processing and temporary storage of specific types of information. The visuospatial sketchpad component processes visual information through the senses or long term memory on what things

Working memory is arguably the most studied area of memory research. Yet, the underpinnings of its functionality remain to reveal astonishing insights. Thus, to supplement the literature, Goodman and Vogel (2005) broadly examine if the regions responsible for memory consolidation are distinctly different from networks responsible for VWM maintenance. Additionally, while attempting to shed light on what can been deemed as a daunting task, Goodman and Vogel assess whether concurrently held representations alter the efficiency rate of new incoming information. Consequently, to illuminate this long investigated perplexity, participants were introduced to a masked change-detection paradigm. Results suggest that the relationship between consolidation