The multi store model of memory Flashcards
What is the order of the multi store model of memory?
- Sensory register
- Attention
- Short term memory
- Maintenance rehearsal
- Elaborative rehearsal
- Long term memory
- Retrieval
- Short term memory
What is the duration, encoding and capacity of sensory memory?
Duration- 0.5 secs
Encoding- Information is processed from scenes (iconic: sight, echoic: sounds, haptic: touch)
Capacity- very high
What is the duration, encoding, and capacity of short term memory?
Duration- 18 to 30 seconds
Encoding- acoustically
Capacity- 7+-2
What is the duration, encoding and capacity of long term memory?
Duration- life time
Encoding- semantic
Capacity- unlimited
What is the research evidence to support the duration of the sensory memory?
Walsh and Thompson found that the iconic memory store has an average duration of 500 milliseconds, which decreases as individuals get older- this suggests the duration of sensory memory is limited and dependent on age
What is the research evidence to support the capacity of sensory memory?
Sperling studied the sensory memory for vision (the iconic store). He asked subjects to recall as many letters as they could from a grid of 12 symbols that were displayed on a screen for 50 milliseconds. He found that while they could only recall around 4 symbols before the grid faded from their sensory memory, they reported seeing a lot more than they had time to report.
Showed that it is potentially unlimited
What is the research evidence to support the duration of the short term memory?
Peterson and Peterson-
Read nonsense trigrams to participants (e.g. PXT) and got them to count backwards in 3’s from a large random 3 digit number for varying periods of time.
After a 3 second delay 80% recall compared to 10% after 18 seconds.
Showed that the duration of short term memory is quite short
What is the research evidence to support the coding of the short term memory?
Baddeley gave participants 4 sets of words:
1. Set 1- similar sounds (cat, mat, cap, map)
2. Set 2- different sounds (dog, bin, cup, pen)
3. Set 3- similar meanings (big, large, huge, vast)
4. Set 4- different meanings (huge, good, light, blue)
When asked to recall immediately, participants made more mistakes on words that sounded alike (set 1).
Showed that information in the short term memory is stored acoustically.
What is the research evidence to support the capacity of the short term memory?
Jacobs tested STM capacity with the serial digit span method where participants are presented with increasingly long lists of numbers or letters and have to recall them in the right order. Jacobs found the capacity for numbers was 9.3 items and for letters was 7.3 items.
Showed that capacity is limited to certain number of items: 7+/-2
What is the research evidence to support the duration of the long term memory?
Bahrick et al used a sample of 392 American ex high school students aged between 17 and 74 (the time since leaving high school was up to 48 years).
The participants were asked to identify their former classmates from a set of 50 photos.
Results showed the recognition group was 90% accurate after 14 years and 60% accurate after 47 years.
Showed that information in LTM lasts a life time.
What is the research evidence to support the coding of the long term memory?
Baddely gave participants 4 sets of words:
1. Set 1- similar sounds (cat, mat, cap, map)
2. Set 2- different sounds (dog, bin, cup, pen)
3. Set 3- similar meanings (big, large, huge, vast)
4. Set 4- different meanings (huge, good, light, blue)
After delayed recall ( 20 minutes) participants had more difficulty remembering the semantically similar words.
Showed that long term memory relies on semantic encoding.
What is the research evidence to support the capacity of the long term memory?
Wagenaar created a diary of 2400 events over 6 years and tested himself on recall of events rather than dates, finding that he had excellent recall and suggesting that the capacity of long term memory is extremely large.
Showed that there’s no limit to capacity of long term memory.
If the point is:
A strength of the multi store model of memory is that there’s research to support the explanation.
What is the evidence, explanation and link?
Evidence- This research uses the recency effect to show the existence of short term memory and long term memory as separate memory stores.
Explanation- Baddeley presented a list of words to participants and asked them to recall the words. He found that words from the start were in the long term memory and words at the end were in the short term memory.
Link- This implies that there’s separate stores for long term memory and short term memory and the multi store model has some validity in describing how memory works.
if the point is:
A strength of the MSM is that there’s also further naturalistic research support for the existence of separate memory stores from the case of HM.
What is the evidence and link?
Evidence- HM was a male participant who suffered from severe epilepsy. He underwent major surgery to relieve the symptoms by having the temporal lobes on both sides of the brain removed. Since the surgery, HM has been unable to form new long term memories. His short term memory is relatively normal but he couldn’t extend his short term memory by rehearsal and therefore was unable to transfer information from the short term memory to the long term memory.
Link- This could imply that there’s different stores for short term memory and long term memory.
If the point is:
A weakness of the MSM is that there are alternative theories that may explain the features of memory more effectively.
What is the evidence and link?
Evidence- For instance, the working memory model is a more recent, alternative approach to understanding the short term memory. It takes into account that each store is not a single structure and consists of several components. Also, it doesn’t oversimplify memory and can explain more real life situations (like remembering a phone number or working on a maths problem).
Link- This suggests that the multi store model is a far too simplified model of memory.
