Multi Store Model (Atkinson and Shiffrin)

• Overview 


  These stores are unitary. The MSM believes that information flows through the three separate stores in a fixed linear order and each store has different roles in the memory process.
• Sensory register (SR)

  gathers information from our sense organs (eyes, nose, mouth, ears, touch) and each sense is coded differently, if we pay attention it is passed on to the short term memory.
• Short term memory (STM)


  Maintenance rehearsal allows information to be held in STM. Elaborative rehearsal transfers information from STM to LTM by processing the information semantically. Forgetting occurs from STM due to Displacement and

  Decay.
• Long term memory


  Forgetting occurs because of interference (proactive and retroactive) and retrieval failure (Cue-Dependant forgetting).
• MSM Strength


  Experimental support - Primacy and Recency Effects shows that when participants are asked to recall a list of words they are more likely to remember the first few (the primacy effect) and the last few words (the recency effect), and are more likely to forget those in the middle of the list. This can be explained as the first few words have been transferred to LTM through rehearsal (or repeating the words) while end words are still in short term memory.
• MSM Limitation


  Too much emphasis on rehearsal - The MSM suggests rehearsal is the only method of transferring from STM to LTM. It can be argued that the model lacks face validity as it is clear that we do not always need to rehearse information to remember it.