Memory and VARK Part 4: Working Memory

For my final post on Baddeley’s book, Your Memory, A User’s Guide, I will be looking at his discussion of working memory and whether this can provide relevant information for VARK theory. In the past three posts, I have reviewed Baddeley’s discussion of sensory memory, his discussion of the process for the encoding of memories and his discussion of semantic memory. In general, I am still having some problems figuring out what exactly VARK theorists are citing Baddeley’s book for. In an effort to figure out the answer to this, I turn my attention to the final portion of his book where differing modalities are discussed- working memory.

Baddeley is known and discussed in upper division (usually) psychology classes for his model of working memory. Most people have heard of the idea that we have short-term memory and long-term memory.  Our short-term memory would be for items that are needed over the next few seconds (or maybe minutes) and our long-term memory would be for things that we were going to store indefinitely (or at least for a long time). Baddeley (along with Graham Hitch in 1974) believed that the function of short-term memory was more than just short-term storage. He believed that its function is to serve as a processor for what we currently are remembering- a so-called “working memory.” Imagine that you study for a psychology exam for an entire month. As you learn new information, you would hopefully put it into long-term memory so that it will help you on exam day. Hopefully, most of the material that you learn will not be constantly on your mind each and every day. You might study here and there, and when you study it is on your mind, but when you are at work or at school (in your other classes), your focus is not on the material for your psychology exam. Now, when the exam comes, you need to access those stored memories so that you can use them to answer the exam questions. When you access that material, it comes into your consciousness and into “working memory.” Baddeley defined working memory as “a system that allowed several pieces of information to be held in mind at the same time and interrelated.”

To illustrate it in a slightly different way, we can think of “working memory” as in use throughout the day as we process the information that comes into our system. As we have a conversation and listen to the words that are coming out of our converser’s mouth, we must keep the words and ideas portrayed earlier in the sentences and conversation to be able to understand the words and ideas that are currently being spoken. As you are reading this sentence in this blog post, you must have the ideas from the earlier sentences from this post readily available to help you understand what you are currently reading. This is a working memory function.

In Baddeley’s model of working memory, he proposes an “articulatory loop system” and a “visuo-spatial scratch pad” (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974).  A cursory glance at the names of these systems may lead one to a “visual” processor and an “auditory” processor. This may be what VARK theorists found useful with Baddeley’s work. So, what are these two systems?

Well, the articulatory loop system is the part of short-term memory that Baddeley believes helps with rehearsing something. When given a list of numbers to put into short-term memory (or even long-term memory), many people simply repeat the numbers over and over. This keeps these numbers ready for access from working memory. Baddeley’s model proposed that the artculatory loop system is “involved in some process of rehearsal, usually via sub-vocal speech, to maintain the memory trace.” The visuo-spatial scratch pad is the working memory component that you might use when you mentally rotate an object or even examine an object in your mind. For example, if I give you a picture of a room and have you stare at it for a few minutes, then I ask you to imagine the picture, you probably could. To do this, you are using your visuo-spatial scratch pad.

The existence of these systems is supported by a variety of experiments. Regarding the articulatory loop, there are many sources of evidence cited by Badelley, but I find the articulatory suppression literature most interesting. If subjects are given a list of words to remember and forced “to articulate repeatedly some irrelevant item such as the word the, suppression of their natural rehearsal mechanism reduces the number of words they can remember.” Basically, when not allowed to rehearse the information in our articulatory loop (because you were forced to repeat the word the), our memory abilities decrease.

As evidence for the visuo-spatial scratch pad, Baddeley discusses an experiment conducted by Stephen Kosselyn where subjects had to memorize a picture of a boat. “Kosselyn showed that a subject who had just responded to question about the stern of the boat took longer to respond to a question about the bow then one who had just responded to a question about the posthole. It was as if the subject were taking time to scan across the boat, and the greater the distance that had to be scanned the longer it took to respond” (Baddeley, 1984). It was as if subjects had the memory of the boat (stored as an image) and scanned it from one side to the next to be able to properly answer the question.

Our visuo-spatial scratch pad may be involved in many processes. Baddeley says that image-able words are easier to remember than those that are not image-able. This seems to tie with observations of children learning language. “… it seems easier to learn concrete concepts such as building, animal, or face than more abstract concepts such as twoness or roundness.”

Ok, now for tying this to VARK. VARK theories are based on separate processing via modalities (visual, auditory, reading, and kinesthetic). Could the articulatory loop be of service to the auditory and reading processors? Could the visuo-spatial scratch pad be of service to the visual processors? Maybe these working memory systems are a part of the reason why some people are V learners (according to VARK) and others are not. For example, one might be able to argue that if one has a better developed visuo-spatial scratch pad, they are more likely to be successful as a visual learner. Is there any evidence provided for this in Baddeley’s book?

Well, Baddeley’s own view appears to be that these systems are not executing critical thinking, but that they are simply “slave systems” of a central executive. He discusses research where one is given a task that leads to yes or no answers, but it is entirely dependent upon the visuo-spatial scratch pad. If you have the subject respond by speaking the yes or no answers, there is minimal interference between their answers and the task itself. If you have them point to the word yes or no (which may require more from the visuo-spatial scratch pad than a verbal response), there is some interference. Also, Baddeley discusses other research that relies primarily on the articulatory loop system and when asked to response by pointing to an answer (which is a spatial response), minimal interference is observed. When the same task is done with subjects being asked to vocalize a yes or no response, there is some interference observed. Thus, the articulatory loop and visuo-spatial scratch pad seem to be sub-systems of a larger “central executive.” In the majority of people, these sub-systems can work together effectively and Baddeley might argue that the individual differences might be found in the “central executive” and not in the individual working memory systems.

There is not much more to say that is too concretely tied to VARK. When discussing the visuo-spatial scratch pad, Baddeley says that the nature of the visuo-spatial scratch pad is “spatial in nature rather than visual.” For example, blind individuals have a concept of space and thus would use their visuo-spatial scratch pad for many non-visual things. This would argue against using the visuo-spatial scratch pad as a homolog for the V learners.

To finish up my Baddeley posts, I have one final comment to make. The last chapter in his book is titled “Improving your memory.” Here are the subheadings throughout: Everyday remembering, Demands on Memory, Visual Imagery Mnemonics, Verbal Mnemonics, Ritual and Oral Tradition, Memory Aids, Improving your Memory, Attention and Interest, Organization, Practice, Conclusion. Not one of these sections addresses individual differences between modality preferences and ability to learn the material.

In conclusion, I am disappointed with this particular citation from the VARK bibliography. It does not appear to provide any real support of VARK theories.

Baddeley, A. (1984). Your Memory: A User’s Guide, England: Penguin.

Baddeley AD, Hitch, GJ. (1974). Working Memory. In: The Psychology of Learning and Motivation¸Vol 8. Bower, GA (Ed). New York, Academic Press: pp. 47-90.