Multi store model of memory

• Environmental stimuli -

  What we see in the environment around us: sights, sounds, smells
• Information travels to sensory memory through attention

  Attention : paying attention to environmental stimuli
• Information travels to STM then to LTM
• Maintenance Rehearsal -

  -Rehearsing information so that it stays in STM usually verbally

  -Initially proposed info could also be transferred to LTM by maintenance rehearsal
• Elaborative Rehearsal-

  -Occurs when we give meaning to environmental stimuli, we are paying attention to
• Retrieval -

  Process of retrieving information from LTM to be used in present situation
• Strength of serial position curve - evidence to support

  -Granzer and Cuntiz found that you are more likely to remember words at beginning and end of list (primacy and recency effect)

  -Suggested that you remember words at beginning as more time to rehearse them and transfer to LTM

  -Words at end of list are still in STM

  -Words in middle are forgotten
• Strength - Separate memory stores

  -Evidence comes from Baddeley, who in an experiment into coding of words in STM and LTM.

  -He found that acoustic coding is used in STM and semantic in LTM

  -This supports the idea of distinct, separate memory stores
• Weakness - Validity

  -Experiments testing MSM are often artifical, lacking external validity

  -Low ecological validity, results collected in lab may not be generalisable

  -Lack of mundane realism, not like real life scenarios
• Strength - Supporting evidence

  -Evidence to support comes from case study of HM

  -A patient who had a partial removal of his hippocampus. He was unable to form new LTM although was able to recall old LTM

  -This supports idea of distinct separate memory stores
• Weakness - Different types of LTM

  -Case study of Clive Wearing may indicate that MSM is an over simplification

  -Clive Wearing has anterograde and retrograde amnesia, but he is still able to read music and play piano

  -This would suggest that there are different types of LTM, for example procedural, episodic and semantic

  -MSM only propose one LTM store