Multi-store model of memory Flashcards
who created the Multi-store model of memory and when?
Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968
what is the multistore model of memory?
a model that consists of three memory stores, linked to each other by processing that enables the transfer of information from one store to the next.
describe the MSM
from the environment, the sensory memory picks up information and moves it to the short memory. through maintenance rehearsal, information is kept. retrieval of information occurs from the short-term memory which as a capacity of +-7 (magic number- miller) and duration of 3-18 seconds. a continuation of maintenance rehearsal allows the information to be transferred to the long-term memory which has an infinite duration and capacity. This information can be retrieved from the LTM to the STM when remembered.
what’s a study to support the MSM?
research support from the case study by HM.
His brain damage was caused by an operation to remove the hippocampus from both sides of his brain to reduce his problem of severe epilepsy. Although his intellect and personality remained intact however he became unable to form new LTMs.
this supports the idea that we have two separate stores for STM and LTM
what is another piece of supporting evidence for MSM?
serial position
words at the beginning and end of word lists are remembered as opposed to words in the middle.
this acts as evidence for the primacy effects (words at the beginning are rehearsed and enter LTM) and for the recency effect (words at the end are still in the STM.
what is a piece of evidence to challenge the MSM?
deep processing challenges the idea of maintenance rehearsal
Craig and Tulvin (1975) gave participants a list of nouns and asked questions that involved shallow or deep processing- asked whether a word was printed in capital letters (shallow) or whether a word fitted a sentence (deep).
the participants remembered more words in the task involving deep processing rather than shallow processing, thus proving that this ‘deep’ or elaborate processing is a key process in creating long-term memories.
what is another challenging piece of evidence for the MSM?
information does not always move in a linear fashion
