Multi-store Model

• Sensory Register 


  temporarily stores information from our senses from the environment in raw unprocessed form.
• Sensory Register CODING

  Modality Specific
• Sensory register CAPACITY

  Very large (a lot of senses in everyday life)
• Sensory Register DURATION

  Limited (milliseconds)
• Short Term Memory

  temporary store for information we use when completing cognitive tasks.
• Short Term Memory CODED

  Acoustically (based on sound)
• Short Term Memory CAPACITY

  7+-2
• Short Term Memory DURATION

  18-20 seconds
• Long Term Memory 


  Information stored by the STM is rehearsed then will go into the LTM.
• Long Term Memory CODED

  Semantically (based on words)
• Long Term Memory CAPACITY

  Unlimited
• Long Term Memory DURATION

  Unlimited
• Strength - study on Clive

  • Clive has a virus that attacked his hippocampus
  • Clive had limited short-term memory
  • Clive was unable to form new long-term memory after the illness
• Research support


  • Peterson and Peterson (STM is limited to 18-20 seconds)
  • Miller (PP can hold 7+-2 items so limited capacity)
  • Baddeley (list of words acoustically or semantically)
• Methodological strengths


  • Done in controlled lab conditions
  • Standardised procedure which allows for replication
  • Assesses findings for reliability
• Evaluation - Weaknesses 


  MSM is too simplistic - views LTM as a single unitary store. Supports 3 types of LTM.
• Evaluation - Weakness of MSM

  Research lacks external validity- lacks mundane realism as tasks are unlike something you would do on a daily basis like remembering trigrams.
• Miller - Supports capacity of STM 


  STM can hold up to 7+-2 and he used a digit span technique. He found capacity can be increased by chunking - grouping items together so can be stored and processed in a single unitary store.
• Capacity of STM - Millers procedure 


  Controlled lab conditions. PP learned and recalled a sequence of digits in the correct order. It increased by 1 digit each time a PP recalled the correct sequence.
• Peterson and Peterson - Duration of STM - Procedure

  PP were shown a trigram and asked to recall the trigram after different durations. They were given inference tasks between exposure to the trigram. Task was to count backwards in 3's from a random 3-digit number - prevent rehearsal
• Peterson and Peterson - Duration of STM - Results

  90% of pp were able to correctly recall trigrams after 3 seconds, 20% after 9 seconds and 2% after 18 seconds. Suggests duration is 18-20 seconds.
• Baddeley - coding in STM - Procedure 


  PP were given 4 sets of words which were either acoustically or semantically similar or acoustically or semantically dissimilar. Acoustically means sounded similar. Semantically means meaning similar
• Baddeley - Coding in STM - Results

  In STM more errors were made when recalling acoustically similar words