Modularity, working memory and language acquisition (Alan D Baddeley)

Modularity

Working memory

Short Term Memory (STM)

Long Term Memory (LTM)

simple storage of limited amounts of material over brief
delays

Components

  1. Phonological loop

phonological loop which was assumed to comprise a short term store, capable of maintaining verbal information for few seconds

important for the initial phonologically-based acquisition of language

in another study stated that children identified as having specific language impairment appeared to have deficit in their phonological loop

Lashley (1929)

can be defined as the degree to which a system’s components may be
separated and recombined

Assumed that brain would be modular

Proposed two principles, namely
‘mass action’ and ‘equipotentiality’

Mass action:brain operates as a whole, a view that has stood the test of time in that there continues to be a broad association between the amount of tissue loss and capacity for new learning

Equipotentiality: all parts of the brain are equal

2.visuo-spatial sketchpad

stores visual information

Brain is strongly interconnected, but if everything is simply linked to everything else, processing will be chaotic. - that's why each part of brain plays its own role