evaluation of MSM

• strengths


  -evidence that the stores are separate as the MSM suggests

  -the stores are separate as they differ in terms of encoding, capacity and duration

  - the stores are separate, shown by case studies of amnesic patients
• weaknesses


  -MSM is too simplistic as the stores are not unitary

  -STM is not a unitary store

  -process of rehearsal is not always sufficient for rehearsing

  -most research is in labs, lack of external validity
• explanation/evidence for stores being separate

  glanzir and cunitz and the serial position curve

  -even when ps engaged in free recall of lists and words, words and the begining and end were remembered best: shows a primary and recency effect

  -however if distraction task given, no recency effect

  
  

  supports sep stores:

  first words had been rehearsed, allowing transfer to LTM which prevents rehearsal of middle words and last words were still in STM but with a distraction the words were displaced from STM and therefore no recency effect
• explanation/evidence for stores being separate in terms of encoding, capacity and duration

  baddley

  - found after learning 4 sets of words the accoustically sim set had worse recall if recall was immediate but sem sim set had worse recall if there was a delay before recall

  
  

  immediate recall would be testing words still held in STM that hadn't decayed, acoustically sim words were confused = coding in STM is acoustic

  whereas after a delay LTM is being tested

  
  

  sem sim words were confused = LTM encoded semantically

  
  

  two stores encode differently = supports MSM concept of diff encoding in diff stores
• explanations/evidence for sep stores shown in amnesic patients


  HM

  -after his op, had a normal STM and LTM before op

  -couldn't create new long term memories eg his father died post op

  
  

  shows that info needs to transfer from STM to LTM and if that doesn't happen then no new memories are formed
• explanations/evidence for MSM being too simplistic


  stores are not unitary

  clive wearing lost his episodic memory but not procedural memory

  
  

  -suggests LTM is not a unitary store and not as simplistic as MSM initially suggested
• explanations/evidence for STM not being a unitary store


  observations that we can multitask

  - this would not be possible according to the MSM because the STM has a limited capacity where it can only hold 7 +/- 2 chunks of info but:

  -baddley found that performance in verbal tasks was completely unaffacted when doing a diff visual task

  
  

  suggests the MSM's view of the STM is too simplistic and has multiple components that do not encode just acoustically
• explanations/evidence for rehearsal not always being sufficient for remembering


  everyday observations tell us

  -we can rehearse things over and over again but it does not always seem to 'stick' yet we can see something once and remember it without rehearsal eg an embarrasing moment

  
  

  the MSM cant explain why we cannot remember things we have rehearsed yet can remember things we havent

  - suggests that rehearsal is not a sufficient explanation for the transfer of info to LTM
• explanations/evidence for research not having external validity


  research is mostly lab experiments

  - stimuli can be artificial eg peterson and petersons tested recall of trigrams whereas in reality memory is affected by emotions and people cannot form an emotional attatchment with trigrams

  -therefore lacks ecological validity

  
  

  means that findings cannot always be applied to real life however some research eg bahrick et al has better eco validity as they tested memory of real classmates