Working Memory Model

Outline the main features of the working memory model
The working memory model was first designed by Baddley and Hitch as it mainly focused on short term memory. These psycologists believed that short term memory was more significant because it had a use to everyday life. The working memory model has three components which were the phonological loop, visuo-spatil sketchpad and the central executive.The phological loop has a phonological store were the information is stored. In this case it holds in spoken information from written words as they are converted in to spoken words to enter the phonological loop. The articulary also rehearses the the acoustic information from the phonological store and coverts material to acoustic information so the store can deal with it. The central executive decides what information enters the WMM and what information should be dealt with. In this case, it has limited capacity and therefore requires the episodic buffer for data storage. Finally the viso-spatial sketchpad, deals with what a person can see in the envoiroment so it is basically visual information which is stored. An example of this would be someone trying to remember how much windows are in the room.
Evaluation
One strength of the working memory model is that it has alot of reasearch evidence to support it. For example, a case of the patient LH who had suffered from brain damage after an accident was examined. The reasearch found out that he formed better in spatial tasks then he did on visual taks. Therefore, this supports the fact tht there is a seperate visual and spatial system within the visuo-patial sketchpad.