Memory - Multi-store model Flashcards
AO1
- Atkinson and Shiffrin developed the MSM. It makes a distinction between the separate stores of sensory, short term and long-term memory. It sees short term memory and long-term memory as unitary stores in which information is passes between in a linear way.
- Environmental stimuli enters the sensory register through our senses (e.g. iconic and echoic). The SR can hold an unlimited amount of information, but only for ½ a second, unless attention is paid.
- If attention is paid, the information will enter the STM. STM has a limited capacity of 7 +/- 2 chunks as found by Miller through the ‘digit-span-technique’. Peterson and Peterson found a limited duration of 18 seconds, by testing how well participants could remember a nonsense-trigram when counting backwards to prevent maintenance rehearsal. STM encodes acoustically as found by Baddeley when people found it harder to remember words that sound the same.
- Through maintenance or elaborative rehearsal, information can be taken from the STM to the LTM, which has an unlimited capacity. Bahrick found that after years, people are still able to remember names of classmates, suggesting an unlimited duration of the LTM. It encodes semantically as Baddeley found people had trouble remembering words that had similar meanings.
- If we want to talk about something in our LTM, it must be retrieved from our LTM to our STM, where it can then be recalled.
AO3
- The MSM is strengthened by the fact that there is useful case study evidence that supports the model
- For example, HM underwent brain surgery to relieve his epilepsy however the hippocampus was removed from both sides of his brain. When his memory was assessed in 1955, he thought the year was 1953 and that he was 27 years old when he was in fact 31 years old. He has very little recollection of the operation and he could not remember speaking with someone just an hour earlier. His LTM was tested over and over again but never improved with practice but despite all this he performed well on tests of immediate memory span, a measure of STM
- The fact that HM had no memory for events that happened just hours or even minutes earlier but his almost-normal digit span showed that he could recall information that was presented to him immediately, shows that it is possible to suffer damage to one of these stores whilst still maintaining the other one. This case is important as it supports the central feature of the model, that there must be two separate and independent memory stores: short term memory and long term memory that operate independently of each other
- Using idiographic research may be criticized due to the focus of the research only being on one person, however it is known that many people with amnesia show a similar pattern of memory – one store is damaged, the other is OK. Clinical psychologists call this difference in performance a dissociation.
- Overall, the in-depth study of HM provides contextual, in depth knowledge about the interaction between the memory stores and provides us with a real world example of memory stores
- A weakness of the MSM is evidence of more than one STM store
- For example, Tim Shallice and Elizabeth Warrington studied a client they referred to as KF who had amnesia. For KF’s STM, when digits came through auditory information he was very poor at recalling them whereas digits that came through visibly he was good at recalling them
- This is a weakness because it shows that there has to be more than one store for STM in the MSM as it is unlikely for singular store to be able to process one type of information, iconic, but not be able to process a different type of information, echoic.
- Case studies are useful in this context because they have a real world application as their experiences and their cases can’t be fabricated to support the idea.
- However, a limitation is that findings from case studies cannot be proved as they are based on individuals with brain damage. This is a problem because it may well be that their brain damage causes other difficulties such as paying attention therefore they may do not do well in memory tasks when being tested. Another problem is case studies cannot be replicated as this would be unethical, therefore it is difficult to test the validity of the results to investigate if there really are different types of LTM.
- Despite this, evidence suggests that MSM is wrong in claiming that there is just one type of STM store processing different types of information e.g. auditory, visual etc. .
- Thus decreasing the validity of supporting evidence for the MSM
- A weakness of MSM is that prolonged rehearsal is not needed for transfer to LTM
- According to MSM, the more you rehearse something, the more likely it is to transfer to LTM. But researchers found that the type of rehearsal is more important than the amount. Elaborative knowledge is needed for long-term storage. This occurs when you link the information to your existing knowledge, or you think about what it means
- This is a weakness as it means that information can be transferred to LTM without prolonged rehearsal but the multi-store model only mentions prolonged rehearsal for information to transfer to your long term memory to your short-term memory, showing that the model is limited
- However, it can be argued that memory can still transferred to your long term memory with just prolonged rehearsal just like in the model, showing that although it may be lacking information it is still useful to explain memory transfer through out all the stores (sensory register, STM, LTM)
- Despite this, MSM does not fully explain how long-term storage is achieved
- Thus reducing the validity of the MSM for memory
MSM structure
all five senses, iconic, echoic, tactile, gustatory, olfactory enter the sensory register
if the info is not retained after half a second, it is lost
if it is retained it goes to STM through attention
if it is not retained in the STM for 18 - 30 (possibly idk???) seconds it is lost
if it is retained it is rehearsed into LTM
in LTM it can stay for more than 48 years unless it is forgotten than info is lost
to remember a LT memory we need to retrieve it and take it to our STM
to retain information for a long period of time we use maintenance rehearsal
sensory register
The first store which holds the sensory information received through all the senses for a brief period of time. Examples include iconic (visual) and echoic (sound) memory
short term memory
The memory for immediate events. These memories tend not to last for more than a
minute or two, usually shorter, and disappear unless they are rehearsed. Capacity is limited to 7 plus or minus 2 individual items.
long term memory
: The memory for past events that can last for the life-time of a person. Its capacity is most
probably unlimited
key features of the MSM
1) Information flows through a number of storage systems in a linear fashion (in a line)
2) There are three main storage systems which are unitary (each a single unit)
3) Each store differs in terms of:
i) Coding – the form in which the information is stored
ii) Capacity – how much information can be stored
iii) Duration – how long information can be stored for
4) Information can remain in short-term memory by maintenance rehearsal, and prolonged
rehearsal (sometimes called elaborative rehearsal) will create a long term memory.
5) The more information is rehearsed, the better it is remembered
6) Information can be lost from each store, but in different ways
Describing the MSM 6 marker
- The multi store model consists of three unitary stores; the sensory register, short term memory
(STM), and long term memory (LTM). Information flows through these stores in a linear way. - Information from the environment will pass into the sensory register along with other sights,
sounds, smells etc. The two main stores in the sensory register are echoic, which is sound or
auditory information and iconic which is visual information. - Material in the sensory register only lasts very briefly, less than 3 seconds, but has a high
capacity. - Information from the sensory register only passes through into STM if we pay attention to it.
- STM has a limited capacity, 7 +/- 2 item, and information in STM has a duration of up to 30
seconds. If information is rehearsed it will be kept in STM, if not it will be lost. Information is
usually encoded acoustically in STM. - Repeating information over and over again is called maintenance rehearsal. If we rehearse the
information for long enough it will pass to LTM and remain for a life time although loss is
possible. Encoding here is semantic, and the capacity is unlimited with information lasting for a
very long time. - Although the information is stored in LTM when we want to recall it, it has to be transferred
back to STM by a process called retrieval.
evaluation of MSM
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
P – There is research that supports the separate
stores identified in the Multi-store model.
E- Glanzer and Cunitz found that if participants were
allowed to immediately recall a list of one syllable
words they were asked to remember, they could
remember the words at the beginning and the end of
the lists, but not the words in the middle. This is
known as the primacy-recency effect (first and last).
E- This supports the MSM in that the words at the beginning of the list are rehearsed
and therefore placed in LTM, but the words in the middle of the lists are quickly
displaced by rehearsing the first words. The words at the end of the list are
remembered because they are still fresh in STM.
L- These findings support the distinction of STM and LTM and the role of rehearsal in
passing information from STM to LTM.
FAILS TO EXPLAIN WHY INFORMATION CAN TRANSFER TO LTM WITHOUT REHEARSAL
P- The MSM can be criticised for failing to explain why in our day to day lives a lot of
information can transfer to LTM without prolonged rehearsal.
E- Craik and Lockhart suggested that enduring memories are created by the
processing that you do, rather than through maintenance rehearsal, things that are
processed more deeply are more memorable just because of the way they are
processed ‘Deep’ means doing more complicated things with the item to be
remembered rather than just repeating it.
E- Craik and Tulving (1975) gave participants a list of nouns (e.g. shark) and asked a
question that involved shallow or deep processing – asked whether the word was
printed in capital letters (shallow) or asked wither the word fitted in a sentence (deep).
The participants remembered more words in the task involving deep processing rather
than shallow processing.
L- This research contradicts the original claim that for memories to be transferred into
LTM, maintenance rehearsal (verbal repeating) is required. Thus giving doubt to some
of the assumptions of the multi-store model.
THE STM AND THE LTM SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED A UNITARY STORE
P- There is evidence to suggest that both the STM store and the LTM store should not
be considered unitary stores.
E- In a case study, after a virus caused damage to the hippocampus, Clive Wearing
had very little long term memory for events that had happened in his life but could still
remember skills such as playing piano, reading music and writing in a diary.
E- This evidence challenges the idea that LTM is a unitary store.
L- It demonstrates that it may store and process episodic (memory for events) and
procedural (skills) long term memories differently. As a result, the tripartite approach
to describing LTM was introduced.
