the multistore model of memory AO1

• sensory memory can have spontaneous delay
• sensory memory is turned to short term memory by attention
• short term memory needs to be rehearsed and repeated or can forget
• short term memory can be transferred to long term memory, things in long term memory can be forgotten
• sensory, stm and ltm are in different places, information flows through the stores sequentially.
• coding is the form in which the information is stored.
• capacity is how much information can be stored
• duration is how long the information can be stored for.
• coding in the sensory store: this store receives information from our senses
• duration in the sensory store: information doesn't last long before passing into stm
• capacity in the sensory store: lots of information enters this store, we only remember it if we pay attention
• stm baddely (coding): he believed if people were given semantically similar words, easier to recall than acoustically. given 4 sets of words that were acoustically and semantically similar and disimilar words, had to recall after 20 mins and straight away. acoustic words less recalled straight away but most at 20 mins. this supports because we have different ways of coding memories in stm and ltm, how we process information into suitable form.
• stm jacobs (capacity): gave people a string of letters or digits. they had to repeat back in same order, people recalled until they couldn't get order right. some did chunking: chunk items together you remember more. jacobs concluded the stm had a limited storage capacity of 5-9 items.
• stm peterson and peterson (duration): people shown nonsense trigrams and recalled after either 3,6,12,15,18 seconds. during the pause they counted backwards in 3s from given number. this was an interference task to prevent them from repeating internally. after 3 secs, people could recall 80%, after 18 secs, only 10%. this supports as when rehearsal is prevented, very little can stay in stm longer than 18 secs.
• rehearsing information via rehearsal loop helps retain information in stm and consolidation it to ltm which is predominantly encoded semantically. information can be stored and retrieved for up to any duration in ltm and equally has a seemingly unlimited capacity.
• coding ltm: information in ltm is encoded semantically
• capacity ltm: ltm capacity is unlimited
• duration ltm: ltm duration is potentially a life time
• ltm bahrick (duration): aim, to establish existence of ltm and see difference between recognition and recall. method, 392 graduates shown photos from high school year book, recognition group: for each photo, people given group of names and asked to match to people in photo. recall group: people asked to name people in the photo without list of names. findings: recognition, 90% correct 14 years after, 80% accurate 25 years after, 75% accurate 34 years after, 60% accurate 47 years after. recall group: 60% accurate after 7 years, less than 20% accurate after 47 years
• evaluation of multi store model AO3: lots of supporting lab based evidence, controlled studies support existence of stm and ltm stores.
• evaluation of multi store model AO3: supporting evidence from case studies, evidence from patients who have suffered brain injury or trauma shows they lose functioning in either stm or ltm and not both. (eg HM)
• evaluation of multi store model AO3: overly simplistic model of human memory, it might be too simplistic to suggest something as complex as human memory can be explained into two single unitary stores (stm and ltm). this is an issue because there is more than one ltm (episodic- events, semantic- facts, procedural- how to do things).
• working memory model was proposed by baddeley and hitch to account for limitations of multi store model.
• dual task study is a primary task that researcher wants to observe and secondary task has no connection to it behind its competitive nature, participant has to perform both tasks concurrently.
• central executive: decides which information is attended to and which parts of working memory to send that information to be dealt with, limited capacity, allows us to swap between tasks and focus on most demanding.
• phonological loop: deals with auditory information and helps us preserve order of information, capacity 2 seconds. phonological store: encodes our perception of sound. the articulatory loop: coding of words heard or seen.
• visual cache: codes information about colour or form. inner scribe: arrangement of spatial information, capacity 3 to 4 objects
• episodic buffer: the 'convenience' store, holds and merges information together from ltm, central executive and visual and audio. helps us work on how things relate, capacity of 4 chunks.