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
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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
In 1974 the researchers Baddeley and Hitch argued that the picture of short-term memory (STM) provided by the Multi-Store Model was far too simple. Following the Multi-Store Model, it is believed that STM holds limited amounts of information for short periods of time with relatively little processing, it is believed to be a unitary store. This means that due to its single store it has no subsystems, unlike the Working Memory Model which has many subsystems. This proves that the Working Memory is not a unitary store.
Our short-term memory is said to require the allocation of cognitive resources (Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968). Peterson & Peterson (1959) conducted the classic study of short-term
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 the memory model. The working memory model was proposed by Baddeley and Hitch in 1974. It is an alternative model that replaces the simple concept of short term memory. It suggests that our memory is made up of a central executive and two slave systems.
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).
Outline and evaluate research in to the duration, capacity and encoding information in short term memory.
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
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.
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).
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
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.
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.
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.
Storage in human memory is one of three core process of memory, along with Recall and Encoding. It refers to the retention of information, which has been achieved through the encoding process, in the brain for a prolonged period of time until it is accessed through recall. Modern memory psychology differentiates the two distinct type of memory storage: short-term memory and long-term memory. In addition, different memory models have suggested variations of existing short-term and long-term memory to account for different ways of storing memory