Multi Store Model of Memory

• Strength

  Case studies
• Case study

  • HM - brain damage caused by operation to remove the hippocampus from both sides of his brain to reduce severe epilepsy
  • HM's personality and intellect remain intact but he could not form new long-term memories - although he could remember things before his surgery
  • HM could form short-term memory
• Case studies

  • Showed different areas of the brain are involved in short-term memory/long-term memory and they have their own unitary stores
  • Unique/individualistic
• Limitation Case studies are idiographic - subjective to experiences limitation - too simple
• Research does not support short-term memory/long-term memory as a single unitary store
• Working memory model


  Suggests short-term memory is divided into a number of different stores - kind of memory stored, their length/capacity = differentiates - phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, episodic buffer, central executive
• Types of memory

  • Episodic
  • Procedural
  • Semantic
• Maintenance rehearsal explains semantic memory not episodic therefore model neglects process of memory - motivation/effect and strategy only on attention and maintenance rehearsal
• This is a weakness as it oversimplifies the complexity of memory