Multi Store Model Flashcards
Who created the multi store model?
Atkinson and Schiffrin - 1968
Suggested that memory consists of three separate, permanent memory structures that are linked together by the processing of attention and rehearsal.
Describe the “stages” of the MSM
(information from senses) SENSORY STORE (attention) STM (transfer or retrieval) LTM
Describe the sensory store in the MSM
- lost through decay
- capacity: large
- duration: 0.25s
- coding: modality spec.
Describe the STM in the MSM
- displacement or decay
- capacity: 7 +- 2
- duration: 18-30s
- coding: acoustic
Describe the LTM in the MSM
- decay, retrieval, failure or inference
- capacity: infinite
- duration: lifetime
- coding: semantic
Give detail of how the MSM works.
If person attends to sensory info, transferred to STM. If not, lost through decay.
Visual info= iconic memory
Auditory info= echoic memory
Paying attention causes it to move so short term memory. However, info lost through decay or displacement if not rehearsed.
Rehearsal transfers info to LTM. It acts as a buffer between SS and LTM by maintaining incoming info from STM.
Encoded into semantic format and stored in LTM.
How does the brain scan evidence support the MSM?
- supports the idea that there’s separate memory stores
- discovered different and distinct areas of brain activated when performing tasks that require STM and LTM
- Beardsley found prefrontal correct active during STM but not LTM
- Squire et al found hippocampus active during LTM but not STM
- different parts of brain used for different memory stores, probes LTM and STM are separate and distinct
How does the case study of HM support the MSM?
- HM had hippocampus removed to treat epilepsy
- resulted in him being unable to form new long term memories
- could remember things before the surgery
- indicates that separate areas of brain responsible for different types of memories, suggests STM and LTM are localised to different areas of the brain
How does the case of KF support the MSM?
- researched by Shallice and Warrington
- brain damaged due to motorcycle accident
- STM severely impaired and could only recall 1 or 2 digits on a digit span test
- However his LTM for events after accident was normal
- supports that STM and LTM are separate and distinct as suggested by the MSM
How does the case study of KF criticise the MSM?
- casts doubt on unitary nature of STM and that info must flow in linear way from sensory, to STM, to LTM
- could recall visual info (info stored according to sight) but not acoustic (info stored according to sound)
- disproves unitary nature of STM as it relies on more than just acoustic coding
- disproves linear nature as LTM was fine and STM was damaged but info still reached the LTM from the sensory store
How does the case study of Clive Wearing criticise the MSM?
- researched by Tulving
- disputes unites nature as it suggests there are several types of LTM
- concluded LTM made of episodic, semantic and procedural stores
- Clive Wearing (amnesia patient) could still play piano (procedural) but could remember his marriage (episodic)
- MSM cannot explain Wearing’s case as it doesn’t give separate types of LTM and is too simplistic
Summarise Sperling’s research.
- Studied capacity and duration in the sensory register
- found capacity of sensory register is quite large and the duration is around 0.25 seconds
Summarise Jacobs’ research
- Studied capacity of STM
- Found it had limited capacity of 5-9 (or 7+-2) bits of separate info
Summarise Peterson and Peterson’s reasearch
- studied duration of STM
- found that information is lost to in STM if there is no rehearsal (18-30s)
Summariser Baddeley’s research
- Studies coding of STM and LTM
- Found STM coded acoustically and LTM coded semantically
