msm

Question 1

Who devised the msm?

Answer 1

Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968, 1971)

Question 2

What is a model?

Answer 2

A model is just a representation of how psychologists think memory works

Question 3

What are the parts to the msm?

Answer 3

Stimulus from environment (from senses)
Sensory Register- iconic and echoic and others
Short Term Memory Store
Long Term Memory Store

Question 4

What does the stimuli from the environment/senses e.g. sight, sound, smell, etc. do?

Answer 4

enters the SR – it has stores for each type of sense (modality-specific), e.g. iconic = visual and echoic = auditory.

Question 5

What’s the capacity, coding and duration of the sensory register?

Answer 5

capacity - unlimited

coding - modality-specific

duration - less than a second (milliseconds!!) = very short duration

Question 6

What needs to be done so the information can be passed to the STM?

Answer 6

the information must be paid attention to, or else it will be immediately lost.

Question 7

What’s the capacity, coding and duration of the STM?

Answer 7

capacity - 5-9 items

coding - auditory

duration - 18-30 seconds

Question 8

What does maintenance rehearsal do?

Answer 8

Maintenance rehearsal (repeating information over-and-over) keeps it in STM until it needs to be recalled or if done enough times, information will go into LTM.

Question 9

What needs to happen for information to be effectively passed to our LTM?

Answer 9

It must undergo elaborative rehearsal, i.e. attaching meaning to the information/making sense of it. If rehearsal doesn’t happen the information will be lost through decay (i.e. fades away) or displacement (i.e. replaced with new information/overwritten).

Question 10

What’s the capacity, coding and duration of the LTM?

Answer 10

capacity - unlimited

coding - semantic

duration - unlimited/lifetime

Question 11

What is retrieval?

Answer 11

recalling information from our LTM. This is how we remember past events, experiences, skills, information, etc.

To retrieve this information from LTM it is transferred back into STM where it is then recalled.

Question 12

Why did HM undergo brain surgery and which part of his brain did HM have removed and what lobe?

Answer 12

He had severe epilepsy.
Hippocampi (temporal lobe) was removed.

Question 13

In relation to the MSM what memory store do you think was damaged & what evidence do we have for this?

Answer 13

STM was damaged because:
• he couldn’t transfer info from his STM to LTM
• new experiences/memories were quickly forgotten

Question 14

In relation to the MSM what memory store do you think was left intact & what evidence do we have for this?

Answer 14

LTM was left intact because he could remember events that happened more than two years before the operation, but couldn’t recall new informaton

Question 15

Does the case of HM support or contradict the MSM as an accurate model of memory. Explain your answer.

Answer 15

HM supports the MSM model because his
STM was damaged as he couldn’t remember anything long term but he could short term

Question 16

What are the strengths of the msm?

Answer 16

Evidential support for the MSM from the case of HM - HM had surgery to deal with severe epilepsy. Suggests STM & LTM are separate stores and not unitary (one store).. As HM after having brain surgery was left with severe memory impairments. HM could recall information from before his surgery, his LTM is obviously intact, however, the fact that he could not retain new information suggests that there was a problem passing information from STM to LTM (probably due to a problem with maintenance rehearsal). This is a strength as it supports the idea there are separate memory stores, if there was one store HMs whole memory would be impaired. This therefore increases the validity of the MSM as a representation of how memory works.

Research support. Peterson and Petersons research involves showing participants a list of trigrams and then asking them to recall the trigrams either immediately or after completing an interference task of counting backwards in 3’s from a high number. It was found that recall was poorer after the interference task. The MSM suggests that rehearsal is necessary for information to be passed from STM to LTM. The research supports the model.

Case studies - provide detailed information about a person, changes can be seen overtime
However, cannot apply the information to other people.

Question 17

What is a limitation of the msm?

Answer 17

contradicting evidence. KF was a patient suffering with amnesia due to a motorcycle accident. His short term memory for digits was very poor when they were read aloud to him, but his recall was much better when he was able to read the digits. The MSM states that there is only one type of STM (unitary). The case of KF contradicts the MSM of memory. The MSM suggests we have just one store for STM, however this case study suggests there could be separate STM stores for what we see and what we hear so MSM is over simplistic.