Working Memory and the Challenge of Language
Alan Baddeley
Abstract
The multicomponent model of working memory developed during the period when psycholinguistics was dominated by Chomsky's transformational grammar and its potential implications. The original model had assumed a limited capacity attentional control system, the central executive, aided by temporary verbal storage from the phonological loop and visuospatial storage from the visuospatial sketchpad. Over the decades, each component of the model has been systematically explored by language studies, which have repeatedly resulted in challenges to earlier versions of the model and led to the addition of the fourth component of the episodic buffer and the recent incorporation of the concept of binding. Overall, the multicomponent model was developed using a different approach than Popper's emphasis on falsification, and the model continues to evolve and has proven successful both in accounting for a broad range of data and in its application to the understanding of a wide array of language phenomena and populations. L11