Multistore Model Of Memory Flashcards
Psychologists who came up with MSM
Atkinson and Shriffrin
What is the MSM
How information flows through a series of storage systems
Explain the MSM
- info taken in by our 5 senses and automatically stored in a unprocessed form in our sensory register
- paying attention to the info means it goes into our short term memory
- maintenance rehearsal can be used to memorise info for a short period of time but it does not go into LTM
- elaborate rehearsal of info means info goes into our LTM
- retrieval info from LTM goes into our STM
Describe Sensory register
- Info taken in by our 5 sense is automatically stored in an unprocessed form in SR
- separate store for each of the 5 senses
Coding in SR
- Model specific
- Mainly ionic and echoic
Capacity in SR
High capacity
Temporary
Duration in SR
Less than 30 seconds
Research supporting capacity in SR
Sperling
- flashed a 3 x 4 grid of letters onto a screen fr 1/20 of a second
- immediately sounded 1 of 3 different tones indicating which of the rows of letters the ppts was to recall
- recall was consistently accurate suggesting capacity is large
Short term memory
- Information received from SR
- Active memory system
- Contains info being thought about
Coding in STM
- mainly acoustic
Research in coding STM
Baddeley
- wanted to see if coding in STM was acoustic or semantic
- ppts where divide into 4 groups each group heard a different list of 5 words
- list A acoustically similar
list B acoustically dissimilar
list C semantically similar
list D semantically dissimilar
- then asked to recall words in thee correct order
- list A 10% list BCD 60% to 80%
- proves STM primarily acoustic as list A recalled least efficiently as there’s acoustic confusion
Evaluation of baddeley coding in STM
- Small difference in recall between semantically similar(64%) and semantically dissimilar lists (71%)suggest their is also semantic coding in STM
- lacks ecological validity: lab study not repressive of real life
Capacity of STM
- Small 5 or 9 items can be held at once
- can be increased via chunking
Research for capacity STM
Jacobs
- serial digit span method
- ppts read a list of 1 syllable letters or numbers to listen to and immediately recall them in the correct order
- stared with a short list and the list steadily increased
- until it became impossible to recall in serial order
- when ppts fail 50% of tasks they have reached capacity
- cavity of number 9 capacity of letter 7
- demonstrate STM limited capacity
Who revised jacobs research into capacity of STM
Miller
- found most people hae a recall of 7+-2 = magic number 7
- recognised chunking digits
What is chunking
Grouping digits into meaningful chunks
Increased number of digits recalled
Increasing the capacity of STM
Others factors that affect capacity of STM
Age, practise, poor/advanced comprehension (can vary between 5 to 20 items) and attention
Duration of STM
- Max 30 seconds
- can be extended via rehearsal
Research into duration of STM
Peterson and Peterson
-ppts where shown trigrams
- then asked to count back in 3s from a large 3 digit number for different amounts of time before recalling trigrams
- counting backwards was a distractor task and prevents rehearsal of trigrams
- 3 secs of counting 90% accuracy
- 18 secs of counting 5% accuracy
Shows duration of STM is between 20-30 secs
Evaluation of STM
- lack mundane realism: little relevance to STM tasks in real life
- other research suggests duration of STM affected by the amount of time taken to process if ppt weren’t expecting to recall info STM was only 2-4 seconds
Long term memory
- Store info for a lifetime
- LTM can change and merge other others affecting their accuracy
Coding for LTM
Coding for LTM is semantic
Research for coding in LTM
Baddeley
- same procedure as STM
- however it differs with a 20 minute interval time before they were asked to recall words
- found list C semantically similar = 55% accuracy list ABD = 70% and 85% accuracy
Evaluation of coding in LTM
Research support:frost
- gave ppts 16 drawings in 4 categories different in visual orientation
- order of recall of items shows visual coding in LTM
Capacity for LTM
- difficult to estimate
- limitless
Evaluation of capacity LTM
Assumption: assumes human have limitless LTM as research has not been able to be determine a finite capacity
Fagot and Cooke: pigeons memories 1,200 picture response associations
Baboons hadn’t reached capacity after 3 years of training
And memorising 5,000 association
Duration of LTM
Long lasting
Supporting evidence for duration in LTM
Bahrick et al
- 400 ppt aged 17-74
- given tasks requiring them to recall ppl that were in their final yers of school with, free recall (how many names they could remember) and recognition task (identity classmates from a set of photos or names on a list)
- compared ppts who left school in the last 15 years to 48 years
- 15 year graduation: RT 90% FRT 60%
- 48 year graduation: RT 70%-80% FRT 30%
MSM evaluation- strength
Murdock
• List of words presented one word after the other, each for 1-2 seconds. Ppts asked to recall as many words as possible in any order.
• Found primacy and recency effects in recall. Words at the beginning and end of list recalled better than middle.
• Supports separate STM and LTM as words at start of list had entered LTM while words at end were still in STM.
Milner – HM case study
• HM suffered memory impairment due to brain damage.
• Stored LTMs mostly intact.
• STM functioning normally.
• Unable to store new LTMs.
• Supports separate STM and LTM and the need to transfer information between them.
MSM evaluation critism
Criticised by Baddeley and Hitch for oversimplifying STM into a single and passive store. They considered STM to be an active store with several components and devised the working memory model (WMM) to address this limitation.
• A further criticism is that the model focusses too much on the structures and doesn’t explain the processes involved (such as attention, coding and rehearsal) in enough detail.
• It is also a weakness that the model suggests information only enters LTM through rehearsal. There are many instances where we recall something we saw momentarily and did not rehearse in any way.
• Also oversimplifies LTM – Research shows there are three types of LTM.
