MSM evaluation

• weaknesses of MSM

  1. some research into STM duration has low ecological validity. This is a weakness as the stimuli asked to remember has little resemblance to real life. E.g., Peterson and Peterson (1959).
  2. rehearsal is considered too simple of an explanation to account for the transfer of memory from STM to LTM. This is a weakness as it ignores factors such as motivation and strategy.
• strengths of the MSM

  1. it provides a good understanding of the structure and processes of memory. This is a strength as it means researchers can expand on this model and do experiments to improve it.
  2. supportive research by Glanzer and Cunitz: they showed that participants tend to remember the first few and last few words of a list but forget the middle ones, i.e., the serial position effect.
• how does patient H.M support the MSM?

  patient H.M was involved in a bicycle accident which resulted in him having epilepsy. to resolve this, he had his hippocampus removed which damaged his long term memory, but his short term memory remained intact. this supports the MSM as it shows that the memory stores are unitary, as one being damaged didnt effect the other.