Evaluation

• One limitation of the MSM is that there is evidence of more than one STM store(KF). Shalice and Warrington studied a client KF who suffered from brain damage from a motor cycle accident which damaged his STM. KF recall for digits when read out to him in STM was recalled poorly but he recalled them better when he read them himself visual this shows that there are separate STM components for how visual information is coded such as the visual spatial sketchpad and verbal information for phonological loop.
• This suggests the MSM is wrong in claimed that there is just one STM store that processes different types of information eg visual and auditory.
• Murdock’s study supports the MSM as he developed the serial position effect where the positions of words in a list affects how likely it is to be recalled . The primacy effect ( people remember the first five words from the beginning of the list) suggests that information must be rehearsed for it to be transferred to the long-term memory and has more time to go through. The recency effect ( remembering the last five words from the end of the list is better recalled as it is in STM . This supports the validity of the MSM.
• A limitation of the MSM is that prolonged rehearsal is not enough to guarantee that information will move up to the LTM. The type of rehearsal we do is more important than the amount we do as it is more effective at moving information to the LTM than prolonged rehearsal. For eg elaborative rehearsal is where we add meaning to information like acronyms and mnemonics which is more effective than re reading information over and over again. This limits the models idea that prolonged rehearsal is necessary to move information to the LTM.
• A strength of the MSM is that there is research support that STM and LTM are two separate stores. Baddley found that we tend to mix up words that sound similar when using our STM and tend to mix up words with similar meanings in LTM. This shows information is coded acoustically in STM and semantically in LTM.
• Research support of the MSM from amnesiacs such as HM supports the idea that MSM have different stores for different types of memory. HM had brain surgery and had his hippocampus removed from both sides of his brain. His LTM never improved with practice as he could not remember speaking with someone only an hour earlier. However his STM was still intact.
• A limitation of the MSM is that research studies supporting the MSM use artificial materials. For eg Murdock’s study asked participants to recall words. Whereas in everyday life we form memories related to all sorts of things. Therefore lacking mundane realism and suggests that the MSM lacks external validity.