Phonological Loop - Stmaryspsyweb's Weblog



BELOW IS THE INFORMATION FOR THE COMPONENT OF MEMORY WHICH YOU WILL BE WORKING ON THIS LESSON. YOU ARE PRODUCING A ‘POSTER PRESENTATION’ FOR YOUR COMPONENT SO THAT THE REST OF THE CLASS CAN FILL IN THE INFORMATION ON THEIR WORKSHEETS.

YOU SHOULD INCLUDE ANY STUDIES AND RE-ENACT THEM IF POSSIBLE. YOU HAVE TO COME UP WITH SOME KIND OF MOVEMENT WHICH YOUR CHARACTER CAN DO WHICH REPRESENTS YOUR PART OF THE MODEL!

Phonological Loop

This component of the model is mainly concerned with auditory and speech based information.

The phonological loop has two components:

1. A phonological store, which holds auditory memory traces for a few seconds before they decay. Known as the ‘inner ear’ because it remembers vocal sounds in order.

2. An articulatory rehearsal process, also known as the ‘inner voice’ which has a limited capacity of 3-4 items. It repeats words in order to stop them from fading away (duration approx 2 seconds).

Supporting research (A01)

• Similarity of Sound Studies have demonstrated that similar sounding letters, V P B G, are recalled less well than dissimilar letters, X A Y W. Similarity of sound in words also has a detrimental effect on recall, although similarity of meaning in words is unimportant. This provides evidence that the code is phonological (based on sound).

• Word-length effect Research findings suggest lists of short words are remembered better than longer words. Short words can be (silently) articulated faster than longer words and therefore more of them can be articulated in the time (approx 2 secs) before the trace decays. This provides evidence for the existence of an articulatory rehearsal process with a duration of 2 seconds.

• The effect of articulatory suppression If participants in a study are asked to say something aloud at the same time as they are rehearsing material in a phonological loop, then memory for the rehearsed material is impaired. This provides evidence for the articulatory rehearsal process playing a key role in memory for words.

An example of an articulatory suppression task:

TIP: Use something like this to show the rest of the class what articulatory suppression is!

Whilst reading the following passage you should repeat the words ‘cognitive psychology’ (silently!) in your head.

Council planners are opening up the debate on the future of every square inch of Wigan borough…and they want to hear from you.

Residents will shortly be getting a leaflet from the council called Issues and Options for the Future. It looks at where development can take place over the next few years, and how this will help make communities into places where people want to live, work and spend their leisure time.

You may not have been able to remember very much of the text, because your articulatory loop was being used to repeat out loud. This is called articulatory suppression.

Key Term definition: Articulatory suppression- when same store is being used to complete two tasks when articulatory loop is being used.

•EVALUATION A02: There is an increasing amount of evidence to support the relationship between the phonological loop and the acquisition of language (Baddeley et al., 1998). In a clinical study of a patient with a phonological loop deficit, but normal verbal long-term memory, Baddeley found a failure to acquire the vocabulary of a new language. In addition, the phonological loop is proving to be a good predictor of the ability of children to learn a second language.

•EVALUATION A02: Key findings from studies identifying the brain regions associated with the use of the phonological loop have provided evidence for the functional separation of phonological store and articulatory processes. Functional imaging studies have identified the phonological store within Wernicke’s area and the articulatory rehearsal process located within Broca’s area. Such imaging studies have also proved that verbal and spatial working memories are separate. Verbal memories appear to be located in the left hemisphere (side) of the brain whereas spatial memory is located in the right hemisphere of the brain.

BELOW IS THE INFORMATION FOR THE COMPONENT OF MEMORY WHICH YOU WILL BE WORKING ON THIS LESSON. YOU ARE PRODUCING A ‘POSTER PRESENTATION’ FOR YOUR COMPONENT SO THAT THE REST OF THE CLASS CAN FILL IN THE INFORMATION ON THEIR WORKSHEETS.

YOU SHOULD INCLUDE ANY STUDIES AND RE-ENACT THEM IF POSSIBLE. YOU HAVE TO COME UP WITH SOME KIND OF MOVEMENT WHICH YOUR CHARACTER CAN DO WHICH REPRESENTS YOUR PART OF THE MODEL!

Central Executive

o Controls 3 slave systems (the visuo-spatial sketchpad, phonological loop and episodic buffer)

o Used with problem solving tasks and decision making.

o Acts as an attention system, deciding which info the sense organs should attend to.

o Information can be briefly held in a slave system while new info is processed.

o Most important part of the system as it controls all other systems.

o Very flexible as it can process info from any of the senses. Modality free.

EVALUATION A02: Research Study in support of Central Executive: Hunt (1980) ****you could be asked a 4 mark question on this study******

Aim

To investigate evidence for a limited capacity central executive.

Method

This was repeated measures design (all p’s experience both conditions). P’s performed a psychomotor task – gliding a lever between two posts with only the use of thumb and index finger – and at the same time completed an intelligence test consisting of spatial patterns.

Results

Hunt interpreted the deterioration in performance as evidence that both tasks were making use of the same central processor (rather than sub-components) and both were competing for the same limited capacity available.

Evaluation

The experiment requires p’s to perform two concurrent tasks that are not likely to take place together in the real world and therefore it can be said t lack ecological validity. Furthermore, it is implied that the two tasks are using the one central component, but could it be that the visuo-spatial scratch pad is in use?

BELOW IS THE INFORMATION FOR THE COMPONENT OF MEMORY WHICH YOU WILL BE WORKING ON THIS LESSON. YOU ARE PRODUCING A ‘POSTER PRESENTATION’ FOR YOUR COMPONENT SO THAT THE REST OF THE CLASS CAN FILL IN THE INFORMATION ON THEIR WORKSHEETS.

YOU SHOULD INCLUDE ANY STUDIES AND RE-ENACT THEM IF POSSIBLE. YOU HAVE TO COME UP WITH SOME KIND OF MOVEMENT WHICH YOUR CHARACTER CAN DO WHICH REPRESENTS YOUR PART OF THE MODEL!

Episodic Buffer and overall evaluation

o The three component model of working memory has recently been revised and a fourth component, the episodic buffer has been added (Baddeley, 2000). It was considered necessary to add this fourth component because a number of problems were beginning to emerge with the original model:

o The three-component model had difficulty explaining the interaction between the working memory and long-term memory.

o On the original working memory model, there was no mechanism for allowing the sub-systems to interact.

A02 OVERALL EVALUATION

• The concept of the central executive has remained vague, even though this is the most important part of the model. Baddeley and Hitch still have no idea what the capacity is exactly and they aren’t sure whether it is 1 component doing 4 or 5 jobs, or 4 or 5 components working together as 1.

• Much of the evidence provided for working memory model is derived from lab studies with a high level of experimental validity. This artificial environment may give us a detailed insight into theoretical models but may not generalise to complex real-life situations.

• This contemporary model of memory is still being researched and modified, and has provided valuable insight into the complexity of STM processes.

BELOW IS THE INFORMATION FOR THE COMPONENT OF MEMORY WHICH YOU WILL BE WORKING ON THIS LESSON. YOU ARE PRODUCING A ‘POSTER PRESENTATION’ FOR YOUR COMPONENT SO THAT THE REST OF THE CLASS CAN FILL IN THE INFORMATION ON THEIR WORKSHEETS.

YOU SHOULD INCLUDE ANY STUDIES AND RE-ENACT THEM IF POSSIBLE. YOU HAVE TO COME UP WITH SOME KIND OF MOVEMENT WHICH YOUR CHARACTER CAN DO WHICH REPRESENTS YOUR PART OF THE MODEL!

Visuo-spatial sketchpad

o Deals with visual and spatial info. Using a visual code, e.g. the layout of a house.

o Represents info in the form of its visual features e.g. size & shape.

Supporting evidence for the visuo-spatial sketchpad and the phonological loop being separate:

oPerforming two tasks at the same time (concurrent). If the two tasks are using the same sub-system, performance is poorer when performed at the same time than when performed separately. If the two tasks require separate sub-systems (for example, visuo-spatial scratchpad and phonological loop), then they care usually performed equally as well together as separately. THIS PROVIDES EVIDENCE that the stores are functionally separate thus providing support for the WMM.

EVALUATION A02:

Baddeley et al 1975

Participants were given a visual tracking task (they had to track a moving light with a pointer). At the same time they were given one of two other tasks: task 1 was to describe all of the angles on the letter F, task 2 was to perform a verbal task. Task 1 was very difficult, task 2 was not. This was presumably because the second task involved two different components or slave systems. This provides evidence that there are two slave systems, one for words and one (the VSS) for visual and spatial information.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download