Gemma Munnelly
The working Memory Model
Bradley & Hitch (1974)
It is argued that the short term memory is active and the process of this type of memory involves three different components, these three components are: the central executive, the phonological loop and the visual spatial Sketchpad. The central executive is the primary element of the working memory model and the phonological loop and the visuospatial sketchpad are the slaves to this component. The phonological loop and visual spatial sketchpad feeds information to the central executive and then the central executive processes the information. The role of the central executive is to control attention during a task but to also co-ordinate the other two slave systems. The phonological loop has two parts; the phonological store-this holds speech based information; and the articulatory control system-this is the inner voice and is used for sub vocal rehearsal. The visuospatial sketchpad deals with visual information and processes how things look or spatial information (which is their physical relationship to other things). Even though the central executive has limited capacity it can process information from any of the senses. From Baddeley’s research evidence discovered in 1973 the findings provide evidence for more than one store in short term memory. The study was an experiment in which participants were asked to perform two tasks at the same time (dual task technique) - a digit span task which required them to