Working Memory Model

Working memory has limited capacity and can easily become overloaded

Imagine you are doing your homework. Maybe you have desk where you can put all the things that you are going to need such as a calculator, dictionary, post it notes and highlighters and a few textbooks. Maybe you are working on an essay for psychology homework. You look up a few studies in your textbook and write them into sticky notes. You stick these on your desk and move them around until you have worked out the order you want to put them describe them in your first draft. Your desk is like working memory – it is a workspace in which information (retrieved from LTM) can be manipulated to solve a problem.

The phonological similarity effect

Select five to ten participants and ask them to immediately recall a series of words which sounds similar to each other such as : “ban, gap, bap, bat, gas” (List A). Say the words at a steady rate, one per second, and nod your head on the final word as a sign for them to start recalling. To score a point they must say the words in the correct order (maximum mark = 5). Ask them to try again – this time using words which sounds different to each other such as “dog, say, cob, sun, peg” (List B). Repeat this experiment with another five to ten people but switch the order of the words lists so that they do dissimilar first and then similar. You now have a counterbalanced, repeated measures experiment.

  1. Write a fully operationalised directional hypothesis for your study.
  2.  Score your participants, they must have the correct word in the correct position to get a point and scores will range 0-5.
  3.  Calculate the mean and standard deviation for List A. Remember some of participants did List A first and some did List A second. This does not matter, their scores should all be grouped together to work out the mean and SD for List A. Do the same for List B. Put the results into a summary table.
  4. Which inferential statistical test should perform to work out if the difference is statistically significant?

Did participants make more errors on List A than List B? In the original version of this experiment, less than 20% of participants correctly recalled List A compared with 80% for List B. This is because the phonological loop stores information in an auditory code (i.e. how the words sound). When the sounds are similar it is more difficult to remember them in the correct order. How do your results compare?

Visual impairment and Working Memory

Rindermann et al. (2020) found that visually impaired children scored higher than matched controls on tests of working memory.15 The researchers explain that people who are blind rely to a greater extent on their own internal representations of the world than people who are sighted. This places greater demands on working memory.  

Discussion: How might researchers use MRI to investigate differences in working memory in people with VI compared to people without VI?  

Assessment Questions

Baddeley and Hitch (1974) claimed that memory was composed of separate systems that each have a function in processing and storing cognitive information. They refer to this as the working memory model.

  1. Explain the function of the ‘central executive’ in this model. (3)
  2. Explain one strength and one weakness of the working memory model. (4)