The Working Memory Model

Describe and discuss evidence for the Working Memory Model (Baddeley and Hitch 1974, Baddeley, 1986). Introduction The Working Memory Model (Baddeley and Hitch 1974, Badelley 1986) has an important role to play in complicated cognition in a person’s life. This essay will describe and discuss evidence for the Working Memory Model, which is one of the most important theories for memory aimed to understand how the person takes control and stores information during a task. The Model gives us a helping hand in how the memory is used in day-to-day activities and for example to understand if the memory works harder with more complicated tasks and if it works easier with simpler tasks.

The working memory model theory was introduced by Baddeley and Hitch as an alternative option to the multistore model version of the short term memory. It is much more in depth and detailed than the multistore model version, therefore it is a better option. The working memory model has four components: the central executive which acts as a leader for the other three stores by allocating attention and monitoring the activities of the other components. The phonological loop has two sub-components, the phonological store which stores speech for a very limited duration of time and the articulatory control system which rehearses the speech stored in the phonological store. The visuo-spatial sketchpad which deals with visual and spatial information and retrieves this kind of information from the long term

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 Working memory is similar to the outdated term known as short- term memory.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?

This essay addresses the working memory model which was proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974 in Smith & Kosslyn, 2007) as a response to Atkinson and Shiffrins (1968 in Smith, 2007) multi-store model. According to Baddely and Hitch the multi-store model failed to explain most of the complexities of the human memory and viewed it as being too simplistic. They argued that the short term memory store must have more components rather it being a single inflexible store as suggested previously by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968). The working memory model is therefore an enhancement of the multi store model. According to Baddeley and Hitch working memory is a limited- capacity system that stores and processes information.

Reisberg (2013) states that working memory "is the memory you use for information that you are actively working on" (p. 17). Working memory holds information in a way that is easily obtainable when needed. Sadly, working memory has a very small capacity. One way they have tested this capacity is with a span test. For instance, researchers would read a list of four items to participants. The text uses letters as an example. Each time the participant would repeat the sequence of letters back to the researcher correctly, the researcher would then add on another letter to the sequence. Though this time, it would be a different sequence of five letters. Not the same sequence as before. Researchers found that people's letter span was normally around seven or eight (Reisberg, 2013). It was discovered though, that working memory isn't one unit. Because of its several different parts, it is called a working-memory system, and the central executive is the one in charge (Reisberg, 2013). Just like any system or business, you have your leader (the central executive), and you have your assistants. For example, let's say you have a piece of information that you will eventually need, however, you don't need it at this exact moment. The "assistants" of your working-memory system would take that information and temporarily store it. One of the most important jobs of the assistants

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

The working memory model was proposed by Baddeley and Hitch in 1974. They replaced the concept of short- term memory, which was proposed in 1986 by Atkinson- Shiffrin model because they believed the model-lacked detail. Every day we have occasions where we keep particular pieces of important information briefly in our mind, storing them until an opportunity arises. For example remembering a phone number while you are hearing it and dialling it or holding directions in your mind until you get to that landmark (take the first right, continue for three miles, past the university and then the third exit at the roundabout). There might be times where the person can have solutions to a problem for example in a chess game. The

Past work has found that forgetting what one was doing prior to interruption is an every day problems (Morgan, Patrick, Waldron, King, & Patrick, 2009). A recent hypothesis (Gray, Sims, Fu, & Schoelles, 2006) emphasizes the strategic adaptation of information processing strategy to the task environment. For instance, load theory predicts that concurrent working memory; load impairs selective attention and increases distractor interference (Park, Kim, & Chun, 2007). The type of concurrent working memory load determines whether load impairs selective attention or not. Working memory load was paired with a same/different-matching task that required focusing on targets while ignoring distractors. The main focus is distractors in the two articles even when the time available to refresh memory traces is kept constant, increasing the processing time still results in poorer recall, confirming that time-related decay is the source of forgetting within working memory (Portrat, Barrouillet, & Camos, 2008).

Conserving the performance of the working memory capacity is an important factor in several cognitive levels that connects with a multitude of other important cognitive abilities, including

Working memory, Baddeley (1986) also known as short term memory is necessary to maintains relevant information required to perform challenging task. Per se, it is thought to be involved in all forms of cognition (Kolata & Kolata, 2009). Understanding working memory is of critical importance to behavioral neuroscience ????. Working memory is controlled both by seat of intelligence- prefrontal cortex, but also hippocampus (Spellman et al., 2015). The working memory is processed by hippocampus which then relays these signals to the prefrontal cortex in brain for executing memory related tasks (Yoon et al., 2016). It is used to actively maintain and manipulate dynamic information needed to carry out assignment involving real time multitasks (Bolo

He used memory span to measure how much can be stored in short-term memory at any time. Jacobs presented his participants with random sequence of digits or letters and they were asked to repeat them back in the same order. They are first given 1 digit to repeat and the digit increases by one at a time to the sequence until the participant can no longer recall the given digits in order. Capacity refers to the amount of information that can be held at any one time in memory. Jacobs found that the average span for digits was 9.3 numbers and 7.3 for letters. The span increases with age because people learn how to chunk the information given. This findings suggested that STM has a limited storage capacity of between about 5 to 9

167). The working memory is also known as the short-term memory. In their article, Working memory, long-term memory, and medial temporal lobe function, Jensen & Squire state that "Working memory refers to the capacity to maintain this limited amount of information through active rehearsal, usually across a relatively short time interval" (Jensen & Squire, 2012, p. 15). As Ormrod (2016) reiterates, the working memory is made up of a variety of factors (factors which influence attention, the nature of attention itself, the limited capacity of attention, and the control processes of working memory) and as these factors prove, it requires attention to the information stored here to recall it and then retain it in the long-term (pp. 172-177). An example of working memory would be the process I recently went through of learning a new skill in a stats class, and then recalling that information repeatedly in order to work through the steps necessary to correctly compile the statistical

Working memory refers to the retention of many items in a short period of time and it is responsible for storing them temporarily. Language comprehension, learning, and reasoning are all involved in working memory. Working memory is important in our everyday lives because without it we would not be able to hold on to the information long enough to do a given task. Problems with working memory could impact how we learn, writing, problem solving, math and even reading would be very difficult. Working memory is divided into three categories: the central executive, the visuo-spatial sketchpad, and the phonological loop. During the past few years there has been research on this subject and questions about it. In 1968 Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed the Muti-store model. This model said that memory was separated into a sensory register, a short-term store, and a long-term store. In 1974 Baddeley and Hitch proposed a model of working memory because they thought that the multi-store model was too simple. Baddeley and Hitch wanted to see if people could use different parts of their working memory at the same time. In 1989 Turner and Engle used the operational span task, which is a widely used measure of working memory capacity to see if people could remember many different items at once. All of these researchers had their own findings about working memory. In the end researchers have explain what working memory is and they have also come up with research and evidence about this

Atkinson and Shiffrin proposed that control processes determines which information (stimuli) would be retained and rehearsed. They identified rehearsal as the process by which sensory memory retains information for STM, which then encodes the stimuli for encoding by LTM. (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). Atkinson and Shiffrin model of memory led Alan Badderly and Graham Hitch to research the interactions of memory and in 1974 introduce the concept of working memory. Badderly and Hitch theorizes that STM’s role is to temporarily store information; but, while working memory is where the information is organized and controlled. Experiments conducted by these researchers found that working memory contains a phonological loop that holds verbal and auditory

Dispensing drugs appropriately can be a cognitively challenging task because it requires working memory which is limited in capacity. In Baddeley’s Revised Model of Working Memory, there are three main components: Episodic Buffer, Visuospatial Sketchpads and Phonological Loop. In a typical task, the pharmacist will read the doctor’s prescription, put the order down and search for the products on the medicine shelf. In the reading process, the brain converts the names of the drug from visual modality to auditory patterns. As the pharmacist put the order down, pattern of the texts in the iconic memory will quickly decay within one second. The echoic memory will temporarily hold the name of the drugs for a few seconds in the phonological loop,