Working Memory Model

Cognitive activities, such as reasoning and learning need a mental space to control and operate. Working memory model raised by Baddely and Hitch (1974) firstly gave the idea that a central executive in the brain coordinates the activities of two slave systems which are phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad, to manipulate cognitive information. Based on that, a huge number of researchers were then trying to explore how cognitive activities are manipulated mentally in terms of information storage and their production. Phonological loop, or in other words, verbal working memory, was intensely investigated throughout the years. In this essay, I would indicate two main functions of phonological loop in everyday lives, one is mental arithmetic

At a conservative estimate, the average 5-year-old child will have learned more than 2,000 words (Smith, 1926) and will learn up to 3,000 more per year in the coming school years (Nagy & Herman, 1987). Refer to the working memory model; phonological loop raise the function of dealing with spoken and written materials, providing temporary storage of unfamiliar phonological forms. Before explaining this function, it is important to point out a phenomenon that many individuals with specific deficits in short term phonological memories appear to have few problems in coping with everyday cognition: they have normal abilities to produce spontaneous speech (Shallice & Butterworth, 1977) and encounter few significant difficulties in language comprehension (Vallar & Shallice, 1990). Hence, phonological loop might only contribute to learn new words, rather than familiar vocabulary. Take it back to learning in daily lives, if a patient has impaired phonological loop, then it might be impossible for him or her to learn new words even though he or she is capable to learning familiar words. A patient P.V. who has only two digit span proved this idea. In the experiment carried out by Baddeley, Papagno and Vallar (1988), P.V. showed a normal learning patterns when she acquired to learn pairs of meaningful words (Italian and Italian words). However, when the experiment examined her capacity to learn to associate a familiar word with an unfamiliar item from another language (Italian and Russian words), she is completely unable to perform this task in both auditory and visual presentation. It was suggested that short-term phonological storage is important for learning unfamiliar verbal material, and disrupting of phonological loop impairs the learning of second language, whereas, it is not essential for forming