Evaluations MSM

• Strength - Research support for capacity of STM. Jacobs used a digit span task - participants were given a sequence of digits and had to recall them in the correct order. If they were correct they would be given another sequence with an extra digit. Continues until they were unable to recall correctly and their digit span was the highest number of digits recalled. Found - mean digit span for letters= 7.3 Numbers= 9.3. S bc MSM argues STM’s capacity is 5-9 and the results aline with this. Increases validity.
• Strength - Research support for the Duration of LTM. Bahrick tested participant‘s ability to remember students from their high school year group. Participants were given 50 photos(some of the ppl were in their year, some were not) Had to identify those in their year. Found - participants tested within 15 years of graduation had around 90% recognition accuracy. When tested 48 years later- around 70%. Shows LTM can last a lifetime as participants still had a high recall after 48 years. Increases validity.
• Weakness - Evidence that LTM is not a unitary store. Clive Wearing contracted a viral infection causing extensive brain damage. Lost his long term declarative memory, as he had no memory of wedding, but he still had his long term procedural memory bc he could still play piano. S bc this shows that there are different stores in the LTM whilst the MSM argues it’s unitary. Decreases validity.
• S - research for support for coding in STM + LTM. Baddeley gave his Ps a list of either acoustically similar, acoustically different, semantically similar or semantically different words. When Ps were asked to recall words immediately after hearing them (use STM), acoustically similar condition did worse, recalled fewer words in order. When Ps asked to recall after a 20 minute delay (using LTM), semantically similar condition did worse. ....
• (S - support for coding in STM and LTM).... S bc it shows that STM is coded acoustically bc when words were acoustically similar, Ps struggled to remember the acoustically similar words from the STM. Also shows that the LTM is coded semantically as Ps struggled to remember the semantically similar words from LTM. Increases validity