A-level Psychology

• Research on duration - LTM (part 1)

  • Harry Bahrick al. (1975) studied 392 American participants aged between 17 and 74. High school yearbooks were obtained from the participants or directly from some schools. Recall was tested in various ways, including: (1) photo-recognition test consisting of 50 photos, some from the participants high school yearbooks, (2) free recall test where participants recalled all the names of their graduating class.
• Research on duration - LTM (part 2)

  • Participants tested within 15 years of graduation were about 90% accurate in photo recognition. Ater 48 years, recall declined to about 70% for photo recognition. Free recall was less accurate than recognition - about 60% after 15 years, dropping to 30% after 48 years.
  • This shows that LTM may last up to a lifetime for some material.
• Evaluation - Research support

  • One strength of the MSM is support from studies showing that STM and LTM are different.
  • For example, Alan Baddeley (1966, see previous spread) found that we tend to mix up words that sound similar when we are using our STMs. But we mix up words that have similar meanings when we use our LTMs. Further support comes from the studies of capacity and duration we encountered in the previous spread.
  • These studies clearly show that STM and LTM are separate and independent memory stores, as claimed by the MSM.
• Evaluation - Research support (counterpoint)

  • Despite such apparent support, in everyday life we form memories related to all sorts of useful things - people's faces, their names etc. But many of the studies that support the MSM used none of these materials. Instead, they used digits, letters (Jacobs), and sometimes words (Baddeley). They even used what are known as consonant syllables that have no meaning (Peterson and Peterson).
  • This means that the MSM may not be a valid model of how memory works in our everyday lives where we have to remember much more meaningful information.
• Evaluation - More than one STM store (part 1)

  • One limitation of the MSM is evidence of more than one STM store - Tim Shallice and Elizabeth Warrington (1970) studied a client they referred to as KF who had a clinical memory disorder called amnesia.
  • KF's STM for digits was very poor when they were read out loud to him. But his recall was much better when he read the digits to himself. Further studies of KF (and others) showed that there could even be another short-term store for non-verbal sounds (e.g. noises).
• Evaluation - More than one STM store (part 2)

  • This evidence suggests that the MSM is wrong in claiming that there is just one STM store processing different types of information (e.g. visual, auditory, etc.).