Central executive:
- Modality free attention mechanism with limited capacity.
- Decision making, involves problem solving
- Controls attention & plays role in planning information
- Control; over other slave systems.
Phonological loop:
- Speech based sounds, limited capacity.
- Phonological store is ‘inner ear’ which allows acoustically encoded items to be stored as memory traces for 1-2 seconds.
- Articulatory loop is the ‘inner voice’ which allows sub-vocal rehearsal of items stored in phonological stores.
- Store & loop cannot work at the same time.
Visuo-spatial sketchpad:
- Sets up and controls mental images.
- ‘inner eye’ which stores visual and spatial information
- Both visuo-sketchpad & phonological loop work independently so can work at the same time.
Episodic Buffer:
- Integrates & manipulates materials
- Depends heavily on executive process
- Recalls info from LTM & brings it to STM
- Binds information together from different stores.
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
| Neuroimaging – using pet scans lighting up different regions of the brain when performing sub-vocal rehearsal task & another part active when phonological store in use – supports idea of these two stores
Objective – uses pet scan which is scientifically credible & produces easily inferable results. Seitz & Schumann – did 2 different tests using visual source & sound base. Asked ppts to carry out mathematical sums which speech interfered with (used both of PL) – supports idea visual & verbal/sounds are different systems but sounds cannot be used together. HM – suffered gross impairment to spatial memory with unaffected STM for verbal information – shows subsystems to deal with verbal & visual info Application – theory states that Visual & verbal systems can usually work together at the same time however with Alzheimer’s they have decreased central executive functions & cannot perform dual tasks (visual & verbal) – imply when talking to Alzheimer patients we should only try to use 1 subsystem at the same time. |
Elisinger – cause study states a man who suffered damage after removing a brain tumour. His reasoning & IQ was high but decision making low – central executive doesn’t handle both decision making and reasoning.
Case studies – non generalizable as they are unique and cannot repeat. Also low validity as cannot infer cause and effect. May be a confounding variable or we don’t know information prior to incident. LOP – suggests that information is retained by the depth that it is processed creating memory traces – multi-store model ignored the effort of processing in memory.
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