Memory Flashcards
Who proposed the multi-store model? 
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
What are the three components that make up the MSM?
Sensory Register
Short-Term Memory
Long-Term Memory
According to the model, how are memories are formed and information passed from one component to the next?
Memories are formed sequentially
Information passes, passively in a linear fashion.
What is Coding?
Coding refers to the way in which information is changed and stored in memory
What is Duration?
Duration refers to the length of time that information is held in the memory store
What is Capacity?
Capacity refers to the amount of information that can be stored
What is the coding, capacity and duration of the SR
Raw/unprocessed information (from ALL 5 senses)
Very Large
Very limited (approximately 250 ms)
(Unknown but)
What is the coding, capacity and duration of the STM
Acoustic (Sound) Baddeley (1966)
Limited (7+/‐2 ‘chunks’ of information) Jacobs (1887) Miller (1956)
Limited (20 seconds) Peterson & Peterson (1959)
What is the coding, capacity and duration of the LTM
Semantic (Meaning) Baddeley (1966)
Unlimited
Lifetime/Years Bahrick (1975)
What studies support the MSM
Miller (1956)
Baddeley (1966)
Peterson & Peterson (1959)
Bahrick (1975)
What was the aim of Miller‘s (1956) study?
To investigate the capacity of STM
What was the method of Miller‘s (1956) study?
Literature review of published investigations into perception and STM, from the 1930s to 1950s
What were the results of Miller‘s (1956) study?
Organising stimulus input into a series of chunks enabled STM to cope with about seven ‘chunks’
What was the conclusion of Miller‘s (1956) study?
Organisation (or ‘encoding’) can extend the capacity of STM and enable more information to be stored there, albeit briefly
What are the evaluations of Miller‘s (1956) study?
His theory is supported by psychological research. For example, Jacobs did an experiment using a digit span test, to examine the capacity of STM.
He used female student participants who had to repeat back numbers or letters in the same order and they were gradually increased, until they could no longer recall the sequence.
He found that the students had an average span of 7.3 letters and 9.3 words
He didn’t specify how large each ‘chunk’ of information could be and therefore we are unable to conclude the exact capacity of STM.
His research didn’t take into account other factors that affect capacity. For example, age could also affect STM and Jacobs’ (1887) research acknowledged that STM gradually improved with age
What was the aim of Peterson & Peterson’s (1959) study?
To investigate how different short intervals containing an interference task affect the recall of items presented verbally, and to infer the duration of STM
What was the method of Peterson & Peterson’s (1959) study?
Male student participants were used. The verbal items tested for recall were ‘trigrams’.
There were also cards containing three‐digit numbers.
The researcher spelled the trigram and said a three‐digit number.
The participant had to count down backwards in 3s or 4s from the number. At the end of the interval of between 3-18 seconds a red light went on and the participant had to recall the trigram.
What were the results of Peterson & Peterson’s (1959) study?
They found that the longer the interval the less accurate the recall.
At 3 seconds, around 80% were correctly recalled, and at 18 seconds only 10%.
What was the conclusions of Peterson & Peterson’s (1959) study?
STM has a limited duration of approximately 18 seconds.
If we‘re unable to rehearse information it will not be passed to LTM, providing further support for the MSM and the idea of discrete components.
What are the evaluations of Peterson & Peterson’s (1959) study?
They used a sample of psychology students.
The psychology students may have encountered the MSM of memory previously and may have demonstrated demand characteristics.
The memory of psychology students may be different from that of other people, especially if they had previously studied strategies for memory improvement.
So we can’t generalise the results.
The study has low ecological validity as they were asked to repeat trigrams which is not a mundane task.
So we can’t to apply the results to everyday examples of memory can’t conclude if the duration of STM may be longer for more important information.
Their study was highly controlled and was in a lab.
So they had a high degree of control for extraneous variables, meaning it’s easy to replicate to test reliability.
What was the aim of Bahrick’s (1975) study?
To investigate the duration of LTM
What was the method of Bahrick’s (1975) study?
American university graduates were shown photographs from their high school yearbook and for each photograph participants were given a group of names and asked to select the name that matched the photographs.
What were the results of Bahrick’s (1975) study?
90% of the participants were able to correctly match the names and faces 14 years after graduating and 60% of the participants were able to correctly match the names and faces 47 years after graduation.
What was the conclusion of Bahrick’s (1975) study?
He concluded that people could remember certain types of information, (e.g names and faces) for almost a lifetime.
These results support the MSM and the idea that our LTM has a lifetime duration (at least 47 years), and is semantically encoded.
