preview

evaluation of the WMM

Better Essays
CEP – Evaluation of the Working Memory Model
Atkinson’s and Shiffrin’s (1968) multi-store model was extremely successful in terms of the amount of research it generated. However, as a result of this research, it became apparent that there were a number of problems with their ideas concerning the characteristics of short-term memory. Building on this research, Baddeley and Hitch (1974) developed an alternative model of short-term memory which they called working memory. Baddeley and Hitch (1974) argued that the picture of short-term memory (STM) provided by the Multi-Store Model is far too simple. According to the Multi-Store Model, STM holds limited amounts of information for short periods of time with relatively little processing. It is
…show more content…
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
Get Access