Memory L2 - Multi Store Model Of Memory

Question 1

Who was the multi-store model first described by

Answer 1

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)

Question 2

Diagram

Answer 2

See notes - memorise drawing

Question 3

Multi-store model

Answer 3

• Atkinson and Shiffrin argue that our memory involves a flow of information through a series of stages in a fixed linear sequence
• There are three unitary stores and each store has its own coding, capacity and duration.

Question 4

What are the 3 unitary stores

Answer 4

• sensory register
• STM
• LTM

Question 5

Explaining the MSM

Answer 5

• first info is detected from the environment by sense organs and enters SR
• If attention is payed to this information in the SR then it enters the short term memory (STM)
• Information from the STM is transferred to the long-term memory only if that information is rehearsed
• Rehearsal was initially described by Atkinson and Shiffrin as maintenance rehearsal
• Prolonged rehearsal will move information into the LTM
• When we want to recall information stored in the LTM it must be transferred back into the STM through a process called retrieval
• If rehearsal does not occur, then information is forgotten, lost from short term memory through the processes of displacement or decay

Question 6

Maintenance rehearsal

Answer 6

• mentally repeat the material – this is how material transfers from the STM to the LTM

Question 7

Elaborate rehearsal

Answer 7

• when we give the material some kind of meaning and is a more advanced type of rehearsal – Atkinson and Shiffrin did not really mention this type of rehearsal when they introduced the Multi-Store Model.

Question 8

STM capacity, coding and duration

Answer 8

Capacity: limited 5-9 items
Coding: Acoustically
Duration: limited 18-30s

Question 9

LTM capacity, coding and duration

Answer 9

Capacity: unlimited
Coding: semantically
Duration: lifetime

Question 10

SR capacity, coding and duration

Answer 10

Capacity: unlimited/very large
Coding: modality specific - depends on sense
Duration: very brief - 250 milliseconds

Question 11

What did Atkinson and Shiffrin propose (SR)?

Answer 11

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) proposed that there are five separate sensory stores to accommodate different kinds of sensory information:
• Iconic store is where visual images are kept for a short period.
• Echoic store is where auditory senses are kept for a short period.
• Haptic store in sensory memory retains physical senses of touch and internal muscle tensions.
• Gustatory store is related to taste information
• Olfactory store is related to smell

• The sensory store is constantly receiving information from your senses but most of this receives no attention and decays within less than a second.
• If you pay attention to the information it moves into the STM.

Question 12

Sensory register study

Answer 12

Sperling (1960)

Question 13

Sperling (1960)

Answer 13

method
- a lab experiment, pps were shown a grid with three rows of four letters for 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds)
- They then had to immediately recall either the whole grid, or a randomly chosen row indicated by a tone (high, medium or low) played straight after the grid was shown
results
- When pps were asked to recall a particular row, pps could recall on average, 3 out of 4 items, no matter which row had been selected.
conclusion
-the pps didn’t know which row was going to be selected, but still managed to recall 3 out of the 4 letters in each row suggesting that almost the whole grid was held in their sensory register showing that the capacity is very large but the duration is very short

Question 14

Sperling (1960) evaluation

Answer 14

• Because this was a lab experiment, it was highly scientific. The variables would be controlled, and it would be easy for someone to replicate the study.
• However, the artificial setting of the study means it lacks ecological validity – people don’t normally have to recall letters in response to a sound, so the results might not represent what would happen in the real world.

Question 15

Multi-store model evaluation

Answer 15

strengths
Explains primary & recency effects
Research support
Brain-scanning techniques

weaknesses
Oversimplification
Evidence suggests STM & LTM aren’t single stores
Lack ecological validity

Question 16

Explains primary and recency effects

Answer 16

• argued we’re more likely to remember words at the beginning of a list as they’re the first words we see, and we have enough time to rehearse them - increases chance they move into LTM - primacy effect
• also we’re more likely to remember words from the end of the list as they are still in STM - the recency effect
• Research evidence - Murdoch’s study - found that when pps were given lists of 10 -40 words to learn - they were asked to free recall these words
• Murdoch found the serial position effect – he found that pps tended to remember the words depending on their position in the list - found that pps recalled the first few words in the list and the last word but not the words in the middle of the list - this was the primacy and recency effect
• we remember words from the beginning of a list as they have gone into our LTM (since we have rehearsed them) – primacy effect
• and words at the end of the list because they are still in our STM – recency effect
• whereas the words in the middle of the list had been there too long to be held in short term memory (STM) (due to displacement) and not long enough to be put into long term memory (LTM). Known as an asymptote.
• when participants remember primary and recent information, it is thought that they are recalling information from two separate stores (STM and LTM)

Question 17

Research support

Answer 17

• H.M was a patient studied by Scoville and Milner (1957)
• His brain damage was caused by an operation to remove the hippocampus from both sides of his brain to reduce the severe epilepsy he had suffered
• After the operation, HM’s personality and intellect remained intact and he could still recall a list of 6 numbers in order - shows STM was still intact
• but his surgery had left him unable to form new long term memories.
• Thus HM’s case shows that if you can lose one type of memory but not the other they must be separate as the MSM argues.

Question 18

Brain-scanning techniques

Answer 18

• Beardsley (1977) used brain scanning to investigate brain activity and found that the different parts of the brain are active during STM and LTM tasks
  E.g. the prefrontal cortex was active during STM but not LTM tasks.
• Squire et al. (1992) also used brain scanning and found the hippocampus was active when LTM was engaged.
• This suggests that the STM and LTM are separate stores as was shown in the brain scans.
• However there is still an ongoing debate about which brain areas are active during STM tasks and LTM tasks and research suggests that the hippocampus may be responsible for transferring STM information into the LTM

Question 19

Oversimplification

Answer 19

• It doesn’t take into account that information more relevant to our lives is far easier to remember and if we do not fully understand a piece of information no matter how many times we rehearse it is unlikely it will stay in our LTM for a long period of time.
• Craik and Watkins argued that there are two types of rehearsal- maintenance and elaborative.
• Maintenance rehearsal just means repeating things, and is normally only sufficient for keeping information in short term memory. - The MSM only focuses on this type of rehearsal.
• However, the other type of rehearsal - elaborative rehearsal (linking information to existing knowledge and processing it on a deeper level) is generally required to form LTMs.
• Thus the MSM does not acknowledge that there are deeper levels of rehearsal and only focuses on one type.
• Furthermore, in some cases, we don’t need to rehearse information at all to form LTMs
  E.g. Kulik and Brown found highly emotional, significant or shocking events (‘flashbulb memories’) are easily stored in our long term memories without any rehearsal. This suggests that the MSM simplifies the process by which we form LTMs

Question 20

Evidence suggests STM & LTM aren’t single stores

Answer 20

• It is now believed that STM can be divided up into at least 2 stores: one for visual information and another for auditory information.
• patient K.F sustained brain damage from a motorbike accident which left him with a severely impaired STM for verbal information only (no visual STM impairment).
• suggests that K.F had damaged just part of his STM and therefore that it is not a unitary store as the MSM argued. The working memory model is a far better explanation of this case study.
• Evidence also suggests that LTM is not a single store as described by the MSM. Amnesic patients typically have damaged episodic memories, but intact procedural and semantic memories showing clearly that LTM must have more than one store

Question 21

Lack ecological validity

Answer 21

In most supporting studies participants asked to complete simple, unrealistic tasks, which didn’t test their memories in ways relatable to everyday life .e.g. random lists of words, digits, trigrams. In real life we tend to form memories related to meaningful information. This suggests that the MSM lacks external validity because supporting evidence may not reflect how the memory works in real life.