Alan Baddeley

Alan David Baddeley
Alan Baddeley
Born	1934
Nationality	British
Education	University College London. University of Cambridge (PhD)
Occupation	Professor of Psychology
Employer	University of York
Known for	Working memory model. Neuropsychological tests.

Alan David Baddeley FRS, CBE (born 1934) is a British psychologist. He is professor of psychology at the University of York. He is known for his work on working memory, in particular for his multiple components model.

Education

Baddeley graduated from University College London in 1956 and obtained an M.A. from Princeton University's Department of Psychology in 1957. He was awarded with a Ph.D. from University of Cambridge in 1962. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Essex University in 1999.

Career

In 1974 working with Graham Hitch, Baddeley developed an influential model of working memory called Baddeley's model of working memory, which argues for the existence of multiple short term memory stores and a separate interacting system for manipulating the content of these stores. The model accounts for much of the empirical data on short-term retention and manipulation of information.
His landmark study in 1975 on 'Capacity of Short Term Memory' showed that people remembered more short words than long words in a recall test. This was called the word length effect and it demonstrated that pronunciation time rather that number of items determines the capacity of verbal short term memory.

Baddeley was the director of the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, a branch of the UK Medical Research Council, based in Cambridge, from 1974 - 1997. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1993 and in 1996, was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Other notable works

Baddeley has also part authored a number of neuropsychological tests including the Doors and People, Children's Test of Nonword Repetition (CN REP), the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (RBMT), Autographical Memory Interview (AMI), Visual Patterns Test (VPT) and the Speed and Capacity of Language Processing Test (SCOLP).

See also

• Baddeley's model of working memory

External links

• Alan Baddeley's biography at the University of York