A component of the working memory model put forward by Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch (see Baddeley (1986), sometimes referred to as the articulatory loop. It acts as a relatively passive slave system for the temporary manipulation of storage of verbal information, under the direction of the central executive. The phonological store is depicted as an ‘inner ear’ that preserves the temporal order speech sounds while an articulatory process acts to prevent them from decaying. The loop is thought to play a role in vocabulary acquisition during early childhood as well as serving to enable second language learning. The other components of the model are a central executive (the ‘boss’ of the whole system deciding which information is attended to), visual-spatial sketchpad (also called the ‘inner ear’ or ‘slave system’), and an articulatory control process (rehearsing information from the phonological store). Recent evaluations of the model have concluded that the central executive can be ‘gracefully retired’ (Logie, 2016),
See Corsi block-tapping task, Memory, Sensory short-term and long-term memory, Working memory
Baddeley, A. D. (1986). Working memory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.