MSMM

Question 1

sensory register

Answer 1

our immediate memory of sensory information

Question 2

LTM

Answer 2

– Can last for minutes to a lifetime
– Potentially unlimited amount of information
– Largely semantic (according to meaning0, may be visual or acoustic

Question 3

STM

Answer 3

• Atkinson and Shriffin say STM duration is 15-30 seconds without rehearsal
• With rehearsal, we will be able to retain it for longer.
• Lasts for about 18 seconds- Peterson and Peterson
• Holds 7 items of information
• George Miller found average STM can hold between 5 and 9 chunks of info (A chunk is a grouping e.g. phone number).
• Encodes information acoustically

Question 4

role of attention in memory

Answer 4

• Sensory information is registered very briefly, but we do not pay attention to all of it. E.g. in party we register noise around us, but we don’t pay attention to all of it, just the convo we are having with a friend.
• If we pay attention to some of this sensory info, it is transferred to our STM where we can process it further.
• If we don’t pay attention it quickly decays.

Question 5

role of rehearsal in memory

Answer 5

• MSMM suggests that repeating info over and over helps to hold it in STM for longer. If the info is rehearsed for long enough, it gets transferred into the LTM.
• Rehearsal refers to repeating things out loud or in our heads in order to remember them.

Question 6

Strength of theory

Answer 6

• lots of evidence to support the theory of seperate memory stores. E.g. case of amnesia shows how brain injury can damage LTM but STM stays intact.
• Ben Murdock conducted experiment to provide evidence for MSMM. He discovered serial position effect.
  SERIAL POSITION EFFECT:
  the tendency to recall more words at the beginning (primacy) and end (recency) of a word list. WOrds at begininning of list were rehearsed. Recency is result of words still being held in STM. Words in middle were recalled less.

Question 7

Weakness of theory

Answer 7

• overstated role of rehearsal. We don’t need to repeat every piece of info for it to be remember for a period of time. Sometimes we can remember things just because they are more meaningful to us.
• There are different types of LTM. We do not have one long-term memory store, but rather several different types.