The multi-store model of memory

• • The multi-store model of memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) proposed that these two stores are connected together via a process called rehearsal. This means that holding information in the short-term store by repeating it again and again allows it to be encoded to LTM.
• The msm suggest that rehearsal is the only way that information can be permanently memorised. Unlike STM, the LTM has an unlimited capacity.
• Rehersal allows a person to hold information in their STM for longer, preventing it from being forgotten in short term as it has a short and limited duration
• MSM also describes sensory memory
• Sensorry memory: a very brief store that lows sensations such as sounds and images to be retained for a moment before we have time to think about or process them
• MSM states that new sensory information can only be transferred from sensory to stm if we pay attention to it
• MSM diagram

  
• There is a separate sensory store for all the senses
• The auditory store can hold spoken words for about 2 seconds
• Sterling (1960)

  • The visual sensory store has a duration. of less than 1 second
  • it has a large capacity
  • Sensory information that is initially processed by the brain will fade without ever entering STM
• Evrey store encodes information in its own way according to the MSM
• STM encodes information based on sound - this is acoustic encoding
• LTM encodes information based on it meaning - this is semantic encoding

  Due to this there are important implications

  • When someone remembers something like a story or joke over a long period of time the will remember the gist, but not the exact words used
  • People tend to forget things over the longer term unless they understand them
• Sensory memeory has a separate store for each sense and encodes information is different ways
• Information can be converted to the appropriate type of encoding for each store - when someone reads a sentence, the STM convert the words on the page into sounds
• The Serial Position Curve:

  • An experiment that appears to support the multi-store model - Murdock (1962)
  • He gave participants a list of random words to remember, and compared the chance of each word being recalled with its position in the list
• The Serial Position Curve Results:

  • Words at the start of the list were better remembered than ones in the middle - primacy effect
  • Words at the end were also better remembered - recency effect
• Serial Position Curve:

  
• The primacy effect occurs beause items at the start of a list are easier to rehearse, therefore they are encoded into LTM. By the middle of the list there are too many items to rehearse
• The recency effect happens because the last few items are in the STM, but due to its limited capacity, the middle items are pushed out - this is called displacement
• There is a distinction between STM and LTM
• MSM shows STM and LTM to be separate stores, this is an idea that is supported by the serial osition curve and by the fact that each store relies on different brain areas
• MSM doesn’t account for the use of visual encoding in both STM and LTM

  • However people are able to take in and sore visual information such as faces and maps
• The concept of rehearsal is over-simplistic. People appear to be able to take in information without rehearsing it. There are occasions where a lot f rehearsal fails to encode information to LTM
• MSM does not show the different types of LTM which shows tat the model is over-simplistic