Essay
Essay Cognitive Psychology
- Module
- Cognitive Psychology
- Institution
- The University Of Nottingham (UON)
Baddeley essay. First.
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“Critically evaluate Baddeley’s (2000) model of working memory”.The purpose of this essay is to critically evaluate Baddeley’s (2000)
Working Memory Model (WMM). The WMM is concerned with the memory
that you utilise when working on a challenging task that demands the
storage of information as you go (Baddeley, 2002). The Central Executive
(CE), Phonological Loop (PL), Visuospatial Sketchpad (VS) and the Episodic
Buffer (EB) are the four components of Baddeley’s (2000) model of
working memory. The CE oversees working memory activity and
distributes information across the PL and VS. Additionally, the PL is a
system for temporarily storing verbal or auditory information and is
subdivided into the phonological store (PS) and the articulatory process
(AP). The PS stores the words you hear, and the AP allows us to repeat
words in a loop (McLeod, 2012) . At the same time, the visual and spatial
information is stored in the VSS (Baddeley, 2000). The PL and VSS both
have their own set of responsibilities and are not dependent on one
another (Caplan et al, 2012). Furthermore, the EB was first included in
Baddeley's (2000) model of working memory as Baddeley (2000) felt that
the model needed a general store. The EB combines material from the CE,
PL, and the VSS. It sustains a sense of chronology, allowing it to form
‘episodes’ that are then sent to the long-term memory (LTM). Baddeley’s
(2000) model of working memory has been used as the basis for thinking
about short term memory processes throughout cognitive, developmental,
and clinical psychology (Quinlan & Dyson, 2010). Evidence involving case
studies of brain damaged patients and brain scanning studies, provide
support for Baddeley’s (2000) model of working memory. Nevertheless,
there are criticisms of model as many researchers question the model’s
falsifiability and want more clarity over certain components.
Baddeley's (2000) model of working memory is supported by case studies
of people with brain injuries. Shallice and Warrington (1970) investigated
the case of KF. His short-term forgetting of auditory information was
significantly greater than his forgetting of visual stimuli. Furthermore, his
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, auditory impairments were limited to verbal material such as letters and
numbers, rather than meaningful sounds. Hence, highlighting the fact that
his brain damage seemed to be constrained to the phonological loop. This
also shows that the brain area impacted is linked to verbal information
processing systems rather than visual information processing systems. As
a result, we can deduce that the WMM has distinct domains for processing
visual and linguistic information. Thus, providing supporting evidence for
Baddeley’s (2000) model of working memory. Another study, carried out
by Trojano and Grossi (1995) found another patient who had a damaged
phonological loop. The patient- called SC, had adequate learning abilities
but he could not learn word pairs which were said out loud. This is
significant because it further supports the notion of independent visual
and spatial systems, as advocated in the WMM. Additionally, although
clinical research evidence seems to support the WMM, it must be noted
that there are limitations with using case studies. This is because it is
difficult to generalise from individual cases- such as KF and SC, because
every person is unique. Therefore, this does not allow researchers to
generalise their results amongst the population, decreasing its population
validity and making the study less representative. Also, there is a
possibility that these individuals may have other complications when
paying attention so as a result, they perform worse in certain tasks.
Consequently, this means that it is hard to truly establish a correlation.
This is an issue regarding Baddeley’s (2000) model of working memory as
most of the major research that supports the WMM derives from case
studies. Despite this, further evidence in support of the model can be
shown through individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (Huntley & Howard,
2010). Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder that slowly causes the brain
to shrink. Ultimately, this leads to severe memory loss and the inability to
carry out the simplest of daily tasks (Ashraf et al., 2021). Besides, Huntley
and Howard (2010) discovered that at different stages of Alzheimer's
disease, distinct components of the WMM are impaired. They found that
the CE was the first component to be affected, with the other components
of the WMM being compromised at a later stage. As a result, this provides
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