evaluation of the WMM

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).

Outline and evaluate research in to the duration, capacity and encoding information in short term memory.

In the last half century several theories have emerged with regard to the best model for human memory. In each of these models there was a specific way to help people recall words and

George A. Miller, one of the founders of cognitive psychology, is considered a pioneer who recognized that the human mind can be understood by using an information-processing model. Miller was also a leader in the story short-term memory. In Miller’s most famous article, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two” remains one of the most frequently cited papers in the field of psychology. In his article, Miller proposed that short-term memory is subject to certain limits, including the span of information that can be stored at a given time. provides evidence for the capacity of short term memory.

This supports the idea of an immediate memory store for items that are neither visual nor phonological and that draw on long-term memory to link the related words. It is used as both the Phonological Loop and the Visuo-Spatial Sketch Pad have specific roles and the Central Executive has very limited storage capacity so as a result there was no where to store both visual and acoustic information. The Episodic Buffer is an extra storage system that has in common with all working memory units, a limited capacity. It is handy and can integrate information from the Central Executive, The Phonological Loop, The Visuo-Spatial Sketch Pad and also information from the Long-Term Memory.

The Echoic store is a transient auditory store, holding relatively unprocessed input. It is similar to the iconic store except it refers to auditory rather than visual stimuli. Treisman (1964) conducted experiments in this area and found that the temporal duration of unattended auditory information in echoic storage is about two seconds. Short-term memory is another component of the multi-store model.

Short term memory refers to a memory system that stores a limited amount of information in conscious awareness for a brief period of time, (McLeod, 2007). Short term memory is integral to cognitive activities such as reading, comprehension & problem solving & language as without it we would be unable to recall the beginning of a sentence by the time we reach the end of it, nor e.g. perform simple mental mathematical calculations (Hedden,et al, 2004). Interestingly because language , reading and problem solving occur sequentially (Hedden,et al, 2004) , information stored in short term memory is stored and retrieved sequentially.( McLeod, 2007) for example, when asked to recall the 3rd digit in a numeric sequence, one would go through the sequence in the order that it was heard in order to retrieve the 3rd digit in a numerical sequence, one would go through the sequence in the order that it was heard to retrieve the 3rd digit.

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).

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).

Verbal short term memories encode and represent information in a phonological form in immediate memory. This was highly supported by Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974) working memory model. Baddeley and Hitch introduce the “phonological (articulatory) loop”, a mechanism in the short term memory which helps in the retention of verbal information temporarily. (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). As these mechanisms are heavily dependent on the phonological systems, they have brought about inefficiencies in memory encoding bringing about various effects which includes phonological similarity effect ( difficulty in recall due to similar sounding words), word length effect (recall to be more difficult with long words than short words), the unattended speech effect

Baddeley and Hitch determined that this working memory should be divided into three parts based on the type of information it processes. The first part, deemed the central executive area, acts as a boss sending data to the other areas while dealing with cognitive tasks such as problem solving on its own. The visuo-spatial area stores and processes visual information and is responsible for navigation. Finally, the phonological loop stores and processes written and spoken materials and would be responsible for memorizing a telephone number. The phonological loop is further broken down into two parts, the phonological store, which holds spoken information, and the articulatory control process, which is used to store verbal information from the phonological store. In 2000, based on a failure to explain experimental results, Baddeley decided to add the fourth part called the episodic buffer. This component is responsible for communication between long-term and episodic (short-term) memory and serves as a backup (Mcleod, 2008). Working memory and short-term memory are often interchanged, however working memory commonly includes the active processes in the brain that make up the short-term memory, while the term short-term memory solely refers to the brain’s ability to temporarily store

Originally WM was introduced by Baddeley & Hitch (1974) as an improved version of STM. It has received much attention and is credited with solving many theoretical problems that existed with the original, simple MSM version of what lies between sensory stores and LTM. In fact, WM is the way we store information while we are working with it, or attending to it. According to Baddeley (2007) the term WM referred to provisional storage and handling of information that was supposed to be crucial for a wide range of complex cognitive actions. Some scholars even believed that WM capacity helped predict learning rate and ultimate levels of attainment in the L2 (e.g., Ortega, 2009). STM or WM holds the information that is in our immediate consciousness

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.

Memory is the process involved in retaining, retrieving and using information about stimuli, images, events, ideas and skills after the original information is no longer present. We can relate this case with what we learn in psychology. Short term memory holds information from 15 until 30 seconds whereas long term memory holds information for years. Short-term memory (STM) is the system that is involved in storing small amount of information for a brief period of time while long-term memory (LTM) is the system that is responsible for storing information for long periods of time and recall information about past events in lives and knowledge learned.