Multistore model:

• Atkinson and Shiffren 


  1968, 1971

  1. Sensory register:

  • all stimuli from environment passes into sensory register
  • comprises several registers one for each sense
  • coding is specific to the sense
  • coding for visual information= iconic memory
  • coding acoustically= echoic memory
  • duration is very brief - less than half a second
  • high capacity
  • info passes further into memory if they paid attention
  • attention being a key process
• Short term memory:

  1968 , 1971

  STM:

  • Codes mainly acoustic info
  • duration is up 18s without rehearsal
  • temporary store
  • limited capacity 7+-2
  • maintenance rehearsal: if we rehearse info over and over again it can stay in STM if rehearsed long enough it can move into LTM
• Long term memory:


  LTM:

  • Permeant store for info that has been rehearsed for a prolonged time
  • Codes mostly semantic
  • duration up to a life time
  • IE: Bahrick et al 1975 found that many of their pp's were able to recognises names and faces of their school classmates after graduating for almost 50 years
  • capacity limited
• Case of HM:

  Underwent a surgery to relive him of epilepsy

  • removed hippocampus from both sides of the brain
  • he has his memory tested in 1955 though he thought it was 1953 and he thought he was 27 years old when he was 31
  • he could not form new long term memories
  • could not recall what he has eaten earlier in the day but performed well in tests
• AO3:

  STRENGTH:

  • Support from studies showing that STM and LTM are different
  • IE: Baddeley 1966 found that we tend to mix up words that sound the same when using out STM's
  • But we tend to mix up words that have similar meaning when using our LTM's
  • Further support comes from studies on capacity and duration such as Bahrick and Jacobs
  • This shows that STM and LTM are separate and independent memory stores which was claimed by msm
• AO3:

  LIMITATION:

  • However, despite such apparent support, in everyday life we form memories relation to useful things ie names
  • But many of the support research used artificial materials such as random words (Baddeley) digits or letters (Jacobs)
  • They even used consonant syllables that have no meaning (Peterson and Peterson)
  • This means that msm may not be a valid model of how memory works in everyday life where we have to remember much more meaningful information
• AO3:

  LIMITATION:

  • Evidence of more than 1 STM store
  • Shallice and Warrington 1970 studied a client they referred to as KF who has a clinical memory disorder called amnesia
  • Kf's STM for digits were very poor when they were being read out loud to him
  • But his recall was much better when he read the digits to himself
  • Further studies of KF show that there even could be another short term memory store for non verbal info
  • This evidence suggests that the MSM s wrong for claiming that there is just one STM store processing different types of info ie visual, auditory etc