Evaluation of MSM

• strengths

  • scientific research support- Baddeley
  • model supported by amnesia case studies
• scientific research support 


  there is considerable research evidence for the existence of separate memory stores. most of these are controlled lab studies and reveal the differences in the coding, capacity and duration of the separate stores

  e.g. Baddeley- we tend to mix up words that sound similar when we are using our STMs. but we mix up words that have similar meanings when we use our LTMs. this study shows that coding in STM is acoustic and in LTM it is semantic. this supports the MSM’s view that these two memory stores are separate and independent
• scientific research support COUNTER 


  artificial materials

  • in everyday life we form memories related to all sorts of useful things- people’s faces, their names, facts, places etc. however, a lot of the research studies that provide support for the MSM used none of these materials and made use of digits, letters, consonant syllables that have no meaning (ZLG)
• model supported by amnesia case studies 


  psychologists have also shown that different areas of the brain are involved in STM and LTM from their study of individuals with brain damage, for example the case study of HM
• model supported by amnesia case studies COUNTER 


  HM=only one person, who also suffered from epilepsy and had an operation removing the hippocampus. this reduces generalisability
• limitations

  • idea of unitary stores is too simple (Shallice and Warrington)
  • LTM memory involves more than prolonged rehearsal (Craik and Tulving)
• idea of unitary store is too simple 


  the MSM suggests that STM and LTM are single ‘unitary‘ stores- research does not support this.

  it has been found that STM isn’t just different in terms of capacity and duration, but in the kind of memory stored there

  e.g. Shallice and Warrington (1970) studied a patient with amnesia (patient KF). KF’s STM for digits was very poor when they had them read out loud to him. but his recall was much better when he was able to read the digits himself

  this shows there must be one short-term store to process visual information and another one to process auditory information.

  the working memory model includes these separate stores
• LTM involves more than prolonged rehearsal 


  according to MSM what matters in rehearsal is the amount you do. the more you rehearse something the more likely you are to transfer it to LTM and remember it

  Craik and Tulving 1975- what really matters about rehearsal is the type of processing you do when rehearsing it. things processed more deeply are more memorable. they gave ppts a list of nouns eg ‘shark’ and asked a question that involved shallow or deep processing- whether a word was printed in capital letters (shallow processing) or whether the word fitted in a sentenced (deep processing). the ppts remembered more words in the deep processing task rather than shallow processing. this deep processing is known as elaborative rehearsal- when you link the information to existing knowledge, or think about what it means

  it is this type if rehearsal that is needed for long-term storage and the MSM does not take this into account