The Working Memory Model

Baddeley and Hitch (1974)The Working Memory Model

• Replaces concept of a single STS

• Replaces concept of a passive STS

• Short term memory is a flexible and complex system.

• There is a central control system with a number of subsidiary systems

The Working Memory Model

Central Executive

The Visuo-spatial scratch pad

The inner eye

Episodic buffer

Allows information from the subsidiary

systems to be combined with

information from LTM

Phonological loop

The inner voice and the inner ear

The Central Executive

• Involved with decision making and problem solving

• Controls attention• Involved with planning• Synthesizes (processes) information• Flexible - processes information from any

modality.• Limited capacity so can attend to a limited

number of things at once

The Phonological Loop(The inner ear and the inner voice)

• Stores limited number of speech-based sounds for brief periods

• Two components:

The phonological store (the inner ear)

The articulatory control process (the inner voice)

The Phonological Loop(The inner ear and the inner voice)

The phonological store (inner ear)

• Allows acoustically coded items to be stored for brief periods (some one talking, a melody etc.)

The Phonological Loop(The inner voice and the inner ear)

The articulatory control process (inner voice)

• Allows (sub-) vocal repetitions of items in phonological store

The visuo-spatial scratch pad(the inner eye)

• Processes and stores mental images in terms of what they look like and their place in the visual field

• Limited capacity

• Independent from the phonological loop

The Episodic Buffer

• Binds together (integrates) information into chunks or episodes

• Limited capacity• Binds together information from long term

memory with that being processed in working memory

• Binds long-term memories together to form novel episodes (elephants playing ice-hockey. You’ve never seen it, but you can create the vision by using the episodic buffer)