Working Memory Model: Baddeley And Hitch

In their paper, Baddeley and Hitch (1974) proposed a working memory model comprised of three basic components. The central executive was the system that dealt with decision making, reasoning and coordination of the other two subsidiary systems. The two subsidiary systems that were initially proposed included the visuospatial sketchpad and articulatory loop. The visuospatial sketchpad was thought to be involved in the transitory storage and manipulation of visual and spatial information, while a similar function was conducted by the articulatory loop for verbal information.
Over the years, there has been a lot of debate regarding this representation of the working memory. Some researchers have opposed the idea of distinct components altogether
An important finding related to the visuospatial sketchpad is that of the visual similarity effect. Similar to the phonological similarity effect, the visual similarity effect is the finding that when stimuli with similar visual characteristics are presented, the stimuli tend to get confused in the visuospatial sketchpad and hence memory performance is reduced. The demonstration of this effect is important because it provides conclusive evidence for the existence of a distinct working memory component that stores visual information— if memory is influenced by a similarity in visual information, then there must be some way that such information is recorded in
concluded from these results that there exists some kind of memory store that can hold sequential information. According to them, when each letter in a sequence is presented, rather than being stored as individual patterns, they are stored together as a single complex pattern. As each new letter is presented, it is further added to this complex pattern. Hence, in this way, when similar stimuli are presented in a sequence, they may get confused in memory. Additionally, they stated that such confusion occurs because the stimuli are not stored in depth; that is, the meaning of the stimuli is not stored, only the visual features. As Logie et al. (2000) describe, “In storing letter case information, the kind of mental representation might be analogous to the silhouette of a city skyline, holding visual information about contour but only limited detail about the identity of the objects making up that contour. Retention of information about item identity might then be supported by some other part of the cognitive system, for example in the phonological