MSM of Memory

• Info is passed to from the senses to the STM when attention is paid to it
• In order for info to be kept in the STM it needs to be rehearsed
• If rehearsal is maintained then info will pass to the LTM store
• has been critiqued for oversimplifying the complex processes involved in memory and for failing to account for the role of attention and other other factors in memory encoding and retreival
• coding- information in sensory register is represented in the same form as it was received from the environment.
• suggested by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)
• Baddeley (1966)- gave four 10 letter word lists to participant groups. Acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar, semantically similar and semantically dissimilar- immediate recall was worst for list A and recall after 20 mins was worst for semantically dissimilar, - suggests coding in the STM is acoustic, as reading list A was most difficult as the recalling similar sounds caused confusion in recall
• evidence that ltm and stm are seperate processes- Glanzer and Cunitz, asked pps to free recall word lists (any order) it was found recall was much stronger for words at the start and at the end of the list, these results suggest there are seperate long and short term memory stores, with the words first heard entering LTM and being recalled (primacy effect) and the most recent words being held by STM and being recalled (recency effect) the middle words were in STM but were displaced by later words
• proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) where they devised the multi-store model of memory, it is a cognitive approach that explains memory as information passing through the three storage systems of sensory register stm and ltm
• how it works- from the sensory register-> attention, then to stm- if rehearsed then it will move to the ltm through the maintenance of rehearsal
• information enters the sensory register in a raw and uncoded format via sense organs such as the eyes and ears, this information is processed by dedicated stores- eg visual information goes to the iconic store whereas auditory information goes to the echoic store
• STM research- Jacobs- 1887- digit span technique, tested pps ability to remember strings of letters and numbers, on average, the pps could remember 7 letters before reaching capacity and 9 numbers, however capacity could be increased via 'chunking' items into semantically similar groups,
• bahrik study- weakness- lack of control of extraneous variables as pps may or may not have stayed in contact after leaving school, meaning that this could have an influence on their memory recall rather than it being down to the long term memory