MSM

• Sensory Memory Store

  Capacity: very large

  Duration: up to half a second

  Encoding: sense specific with separate stores for each sense

  Info lost through: decay
• Short Term Memory Store

  Capacity: 7+/-2 chunks

  Duration: less than 30 seconds

  Encoding: usually auditory

  Info lost through: decay or displacement
• Long Term Memory Store

  Capacity: unlimited

  Duration: unlimited, potentially a lifetime

  Encoding: usually semantic

  Info lost through: decay/retrieval failure/interference
• Main Assumptions Of The Multistore Model - Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968

  • different - STM and LTM are different in terms of capacity, duration and encoding
  • unitary - both STM and LTM are unitary (there is only one store for each)
  • linear - all information must pass through each stage in a set order (SM, STM, LTM)
• Research supporting the multistore model - duration of the STM

  • Peterson and Peterson (1959)
  • ppts shown a consonant trigram, then counted backwards in 3s
  • after 3-18 second intervals they were asked to recall the trigram
  • after 18 secs, fewer than 10% were recalled correctly
• Research supporting the multistore model - duration of the LTM

  • Bahrick et Al (1975)
  • one group of graduates shown photos from their high school yearbook and asked to match them to names - recognition group
  • another group were asked to name the people without a list of names - recall group
  • after 47 years, group 1 was 60% accurate
  • group 2 was 20% accurate
• Research supporting the multistore model - Capacity of the LTM

  • Linton (1975)
  • kept a daily record of life events and assigned a key word to each day
  • 7 years later she was 70% accurate at recalling the events by using the keyword
  • estimated 11,000 events recorded
• Research supporting the multistore model - Encoding of the STM & LTM

  • Baddeley (1966)
  • STM - ppts were asked to recall a list of five words straight after presentation taken from the following categories: acoustically similar , acoustically dissimilar , semantically similar , semantically dissimilar
  • LTM - each list of words was extended to ten and recall was tested after a 20 min interval
  • Results - in the STM, ppts had the most difficulty remembering acoustically similar words & in the LTM it was semantically similar
  • Conc - info in the STM is encoded acoustically & in the LTM semantically
• Who proposed the MSM

  Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
• Maintenance rehearsal

  repeatedly saying/thinking something in STM to hold it there for longer
• Elaborate rehearsal

  thinking about the meaning of a term to be remembered in the LTM
• Weakness of MSM - Clive Wearing

  the case of Clive Wearing doesn't suggest that the LTM is unitary because he could recall skills from before his illness, but not facts/events

  -> suggests at least two different types of LTM
• Weakness of MSM - Flashbulb Memories

  Vivid memories of a particular event, these are remembered without any sort of rehearsal

  -> contradict the idea that memory is linear
• Weakness of MSM - K.F

  he could make new LTM even though his STM was impaired

  -> contradicts the idea that memory is linear
• Strength of MSM - Brain Scans and Clive Wearing

  • brain scans show separate areas of the brain are active when doing tasks involving the STM and LTM
  • Clive Wearing had an intact STM but was unable to form new LTMS
  • supports the idea that they're separate stores