Memory- The Multi Store Model MSM 1/6

Question 1

Who created the MSM?

Answer 1

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1986)

Question 2

Information processing model of memory:

Answer 2

• linear model: Information is shown to flow through the system in one direction.
• Passive stores: The stores hold on to information before being passed on or lost.

Question 3

The three MSM stores

Answer 3

Sensory register
Short term memory
and
Long term memory

Question 4

Features of each store:

Answer 4

Coding
Capacity
Duration

Question 5

Coding

Answer 5

The different information types/formats the brain uses to store memory

Question 6

Capacity

Answer 6

How much information can be held by a store.

Question 7

Duration

Answer 7

How long information can be held in that store for before loss.

Question 8

MSM

Answer 8

Attention
Sensory ➡️ STM ➡️REHERSAL ➡️LTM
register RETRIEVAL⬅️

⬇️. ⬇️. ⬇️
Info Info. Info
Lost Lost. Lost

Question 9

Sensory register

Answer 9

Sensory Register (SR): Store is not under cognitive control like STM or LTM, Sensory information coming from the senses is detected and recorded automatically. All information found in the short term or long term memory stores were initially gathered by the sensory register. Information is passed on to STM by paying attention

Question 10

All information found in STM or LTM stores were initially gathered by the

Answer 10

Sensory register

Question 11

Information is passed on to STM by

Answer 11

Paying attention

Question 12

Coding
-stores

Answer 12

Store depends on the sense organ that the information comes from
Iconic = Vision,
Echoic = Sound,
Haptic = Touch,
Gustatory = Taste,
Olfactory = Smell.
Or
we can just say modality specific.

Question 13

Iconic

Answer 13

Vision

Question 14

Echoic

Answer 14

Sound

Question 15

Haptic

Answer 15

touch

Question 16

Gusatory

Answer 16

Taste

Question 17

Olfactory

Answer 17

Smell

Question 18

Sensory register
Capacity

Answer 18

Capacity: Very large, has to contain all the sense impressions for all the senses in the moment. However only what is paid attention to is passed to the STM

Question 19

Sensory register
Duration

Answer 19

Duration: Very short, as low as 250 milliseconds. As so much information is held, it cannot be retained for very long.

However each store has a different duration

Question 20

Short term memory (STM)

Answer 20

Short term memory receives information from the sensory register by paying attention.

Question 21

STM passes information LTM through

Answer 21

Rehearsal

Either
maintenance rehearsal
Or
Elaborative rehearsal

Question 22

Maintenance rehearsal

Answer 22

Repeating the information

Question 23

Elaborative rehearsal

Answer 23

Linking to information already in LTM

Question 24

How is info be lost from LTM?

Answer 24

Via

displacement
Or
decay

Question 25

Displacement

Answer 25

New information

Question 26

Decay

Answer 26

Lost over time

Question 27

STM

coding

Answer 27

Information in short term memory is stored acoustically (in the form of sound / spoken words)

Question 28

STM

Capacity

Answer 28

Capacity: Miller suggested this is small, approximately 7 items plus or minus 2 items (5-9) and this can be improved by chunking. making small sets/ groups of items. This reduces the number of items overall

Question 29

STM

Duration

Answer 29

Duration: Short, 18-30 seconds. However duration of information can be extended by verbal rehearsal (rehearsal loop)

Question 30

LTM

Answer 30

Information stored may last permanently and LTM may be unlimited in the amount of information it can contain. Information comes into LTM from STM via rehearsal and in order to use information in LTM it needs to be passed back to short term memory via retrieval.

Question 31

LTM

Coding

Answer 31

Coding: Information in long term memory is stored semantically, this is in the form of “meaning”

Question 32

LTM

Capacity

Answer 32

Capacity: No limit has been found to the amount of information that can be stored in LTM. Information can be lost, but this doesn’t seem to be because it is *out of room” the information may still be in LTM but not accessible.

Question 33

LTM

Duration

Answer 33

Duration: is potentially unlimited as reca of childhood events is normal even for t oldest people.

Question 34

Evidence that STM and LTM stores are separate processes

Evaluation

Answer 34

Glanzer and Cunitz (1966): Asked participants to free recall word lists (any order)

It was found recall was much stronger for words at the start and at the end of the list. These results suggest there are separate short and long term memory stores, with the words first heard entering LTM and being recalled (primacy effect) and the most recent words being held by STM and being recalled (recency effect) the middle words were in STM but were displaced by later words.

Question 35

EVALUATION
Capacity Sperling

Answer 35

CAPACITY: Sperling (1960): Trained participants were presented with a three by four grid of letters (12 total) When presented quickly (1/20’” of a second), then had to recall one row. it was found that recall for a row was over 75%. This suggests that all rows were contained within the capacity of the iconic store, so sensory memory is large.
Extra point: when asked to recall all letters Spearing found participants could only recall the first 4-5 letters, suggesting the letters faded from sensory memory before they could be paid attention to and passed to STM. This suggests the DURATION of sensory memory is <1 sec

Question 36

EVALUATION
CODING Baddeley
STM

Answer 36

Baddeley (1966): Gave four 10 word lists to four participant groups
A: Acoustically similar- words sound the same,
B: Acoustically dissimilar - word sound different
C: Semantically similar - have related meaning,
D: Semantically dissimilar - words are unrelated

It was found that immediate recall was worst for list A and recall after 20 mins was worst with list C This suggests…that the coding in STM is acoustic, as recalling list A was most difficult as the recalling similar sounds caused confusion in recall.

Question 37

Evaluation
Capacity - Jacobs

Answer 37

CAPACITY: Jacobs (1887):

Participants were presented with lists of letters or numbers.

Participants then had to recall the list. It was found that the capacity for letters was on average around 7 items for letters and 9 for numbers (usually stated 7+/-2). This suggests that the capacity of STM is very limited. Miller suggested this can be improved by chunking, making small sets/ groups of items, this reduces the total number of items overall.

Question 38

Evaluation
Duration- Peterson and Peterson

Answer 38

Peterson and Peterson (1959): who showed participants three letter trigrams (e-g.
HFD, TKU). Then participants had to count backwards for a few seconds to stop maintenance rehearsal (interference task), It was found after 18 seconds recall was less than 10% This suggests that unless maintained information is held in STM for only a few seconds (18-30 seconds max) before it disappears.

Question 39

EVALUATION
CODING Baddeley
LTM

Answer 39

CODING: Baddeley (1966): Gave four 10 word lists to four participant groups
A: Acoustically similar- words sound the same, B: Acoustically dissimilar - word sound different
C: Semantically similar- have related meaning, D: Semantically dissimilar - words are unrelated It was found immediate recall was worst for list A and recall after 20 mins was worst with list D This suggests…that the coding in LTM is semantic, as recalling list C was most difficult as the recalling similar meanings caused confusion in recall.

Question 40

EVALUATION
capacity
Wagenaar (1986)

Answer 40

Wagenaar (1986) created a diary of over 2400 events during the course of six years including recording who, when what and where. It was found when tested using these cues he had 75% recall of one particular critical detail after 1 year and 45% after 5 years. And his sense of remembering the event (retention judgement) was high 80% after 5 years This suggests the capacity of LTM is very large, potentially limitless

Question 41

Evaluation
Duration
Bharick

Answer 41

Wagenaar (1986) created a diary of over 2400 events during the course of six years including recording who, when what and where. It was found when tested using these cues he had 75% recall of one particular critical detail after 1 year and 45% after 5 years. And his sense of remembering the event (retention judgement) was high 80% after 5 years This suggests the capacity of LTM is very large, potentially limitless

Question 42

Evaluation
Highly artificial and lacks external validity

Answer 42

Cognitive experiments testing aspects of the MSM are often highly artificial, lacking in external validity. There is low ecological validity, results collected in lab environment my not be generalisable to other more naturalistic situations like school and work. Also there is a lack of mundane realism, the experimental tasks testing the MSM are unlike how people use their memory in real life scenarios.

Question 43

Evaluation
Uncovering

Answer 43

The artificial nature of the design of experimental studies may be the only way of clearly measuring memory, and testing the limits of memory. This approach may ultimately uncover the underling internal mental structure of memory.

Question 44

Evaluation
Incorrect inferences

Answer 44

Models of memory cannot be directly observed so researchers have to make inferences on the structure of memory based on the behaviour observed during experimentation. These inferences are effectively educated guesses and could be incorrect.

Question 45

Evaluation
Matches what would be expected from evolutionary theory

Answer 45

The large capacity and short duration of the sensory register matches what would be expected from evolutionary theory, that as much information as possible is gathered from the environment, but only the important information is processes

Question 46

Evaluation
Lacks face validity

Answer 46

Later research has demonstrated that neither STM or LTM are unitary stores.
There are multiple types of LTM and STM is better explained by the WMM. Als the MSM lacks face validity, we all have LTM’s of tastes and smells, and many people experience the capacity of STM, not as fixed, but changing over a lifetime.