This theory, proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974), responds to criticisms levered against Atkinson and Shiffrin’s concept of Short Term Memory by adding an understanding of nuances within primary memory. Working Memory is a development on the idea of a Primary Memory Store. Because of this, memory tasks using nonsense characters are much more difficult to complete than tasks using letters, words or numbers. It is therefore much easier to rehearse information that can be labelled with words, or has a particular sound, as this taps into the coding style of the store. Short Term Memory is primarily an acoustic store, so information is coded in terms of sounds. However, rehearsal will keep a piece of information in Short Term Memory and sufficient rehearsal will transfer a piece of information into the Long Term Memory store for later retrieval. Any information not rehearsed in that time will be lost. Short Term Memory lasts for around 30 seconds to a minute. It is possible to maximise the potential capacity of the store by ‘chunking’ information together – compounding pieces of information into a larger unit in order to keep more information active in Short Term Memory at any given moment. Miller (1956) suggests that the capacity of Short Term Memory is 7 +/- 2 pieces of information at any one moment in time. Short Term Memory is a primary memory store that is responsible for dealing with whatever information we are dealing with in the here and now.
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