Multi-store model of memory Flashcards
What is duration?
How long the information in our memory lasts
What is capacity?
How much information our memory can hold
What is encoding?
How information goes in and the format in which it is stored
What is the duration of STM?
18 seconds
What did Peterson and Peterson investigate?
The duration of STM
What did Peterson and Peterson ask participants to do in their study?
- Presented with consonant syllables and a 3 digit number to be remembered
- Asked to count backwards after a delay of a varying amount of times
- Then recall information
What were Peterson and Petersons findings?
That STM duration is less than 18 seconds if maintenance/verbal rehearsal is prevented
What were 2 limitations of Peterson and Petersons study?
- Low ecological validity as artificial stimulus material used
- Results may be inaccurate due to participants guessing what they would be asked to do
What is the duration of the long term memory?
Potentially unlimited
Who investigated the duration of LTM?
Bahrick
What were participants asked to do in Bahricks study?
Ex high school pupils asked to:
- Recall as many names as possible
- Put names to faces from high school year book
What were the results of Bahricks study?
48 years later = 70% accuracy
What is one strength and one limitation of Bahricks study?
- Meaningful stimulus material so duration was better
- Participants may have looked at year book/seen classmates since high school leading to better recall
What is the capacity of the long term memory?
Infinite
What is the capacity of short term memory?
7 + / - 2 chunks
What did Miller/Jacobs do in their investigation of the capacity of STM?
Participants were presented with a 3 digit sequence of digits/letter to remember. He assessed the capacity using digit span technique
What is encoding in STM?
Acoustic
What is encoding in LTM?
Semantic
What did Baddeley give participants in his lap experiment?
List of words that were acoustically similar/dissimilar and a list of words that were semantically similar/dissimilar
What were the results of Baddeleys experiment?
More difficulty remembering Acoustically similar words in STM but not LTM
More difficulty remembering semantically similar words in LTM but not STM
What are the three stores in the MSM?
Sensory, STM + LTM
What causes the information in the sensory store to be transferred to the STM?
Attention
What happens if information in the STM is not rehearsed?
It decays
What happens with increased/frequent maintenance rehearsal of information in the STM?
It is transferred to the LTM
The more rehearsal of information, the -
better it is remembered
What is a (sensory memory) lab experiment supporting the MSM?
- Sperling asked participants to report 12 letters/digits from a 3 line display after a short delay
- Recall was poorer for all items than one row display
- supports the idea that information decays rapidly in the sensory store
What does Sperlings results show and how does it support the MSM?
- Shows information decays rapidly in sensory store
- Supports MSM theory of sensory store and duration of information
What was Glanzer and Cunitz serial position experiment?
- Participants asked to remember list of words
- Words at start and end of lost best remembered
What did Glanzer and Cunitz serial position experiment show?
- First words best rehearsed and transferred to LTM
- Last words in STM
- Supports the idea that STM and LTM are 2 diff stores
What does the case of HM show?
Supports the idea that LTM and STM separate stores
How might information in the STM be lost?
Decay or displacement
What are two strengths of the MSM?
- Research support (Glanzer + Cunitz, Sperling)
- Produces testible predictions
What is a main limitation of MSM?
The MSM suggests that the LTM and STM are single stores, when they are divided into separate stores. A study showed amnesiac patients procedural memories were intact but not other types of LTM
What is a second limitation of the MSM?
LACK OF VALIDITY:
Studies mainly conducted in a lab (reduces ecological validity) involving psychology students, students may guess the aim of experiment which can alter behaviour
What is the multistore model?
An explanation of how our memory processes work, based on the idea that there are three seperate components
Who proposed the multistore model?
Atkinson and Shiffrin
Where does information first arrive?
The sensory memory
When information arrives at the sensory memory, what happens if attention is paid to this information?
It is transferred to the short term memory
What happens if no attention is paid to the information in the sensory memory?
It will rapidly decay
What state is the information in the short term memory in?
A fragile state
In the short term memory, what will happen if information is not sufficiently rehearsed?
It will decay of be displaced by new information
In Glanzer and Cunitz serial position effect study, why were words recalled better from the start and the ends of the list?
Primacy and regency effect
Which 3 studies support the MSM?
- Sperling
- Glanzer and Cunitz
- Case of HM
What is a third limitation of the MSM?
It only takes maintenance rehearsal into account, but a study by Craik and Tulving found that elaboration rehearsal is just as important
