2.1.2 - the multi-store model of memory

Question 1

who developed the multi-store model of memory?

Answer 1

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968)

Question 2

what are the three parts of the memory?

Answer 2

sensory store (SS)
short-term memory (STM)
long-term memory (LTM)

Question 3

what is the sensory store?

Answer 3

a very short-term store where information is kept before being encoded into the STMA

Question 4

what is the short-term memory?

Answer 4

where information is kept whilst in current use - it has limited capacity and duration

Question 5

what is the long-term memory?

Answer 5

where information we have previously encoded is kept, so it can be used in the future if needed

Question 6

how is information transferred from the sensory store to the short-term memory?

Answer 6

a sensory experience enters the sensory store and is held briefly before it decays
attended (given attention to) information is transferred from the sensory store to the short-term memory

Question 7

what is the role of the long-term memory in transferring information from the sensory store to short-term memory?

Answer 7

it makes sense of the information and assigns a verbal label eg. if we register the image of a horse in our SS, it can’t be stored as an auditory verbal STM until we have used our LTM to identify what the object represents

Question 8

how is information transferred from the short-term to long-term memory?

Answer 8

information in the STM is held for around 30 seconds before decaying, unless it is rehearsed (consciously practiced and repeated)
information is transferred from the STM to LTM possibly due to rehearsal, but more durable memory traces can be achieved using mental operations like mnemonics

Question 9

how does the sensory store encode information?

Answer 9

as 1 sensory register for each sensory modality (visual, auditory, haptic, olfactory, gustatory)

Question 10

what is the duration of the sensory store?

Answer 10

around 50 milliseconds to a few seconds

Question 11

what is the capacity of the sensory store?

Answer 11

3-4 items

Question 12

how is information retrieved from the sensory store?

Answer 12

using scanning

Question 13

how does the short-term memory encode information?

Answer 13

as acoustic (how information sounds) or verbal memory traces, due to the phonological similarity effect (similar sounding letters and words are acoustically confused in the STM making them more difficult to recall)

Question 14

what is the duration of the short-term memory?

Answer 14

15-30 seconds - then decays completely unless maintained through rehearsal

Question 15

what study demonstrates the duration of the short-term memory?

Answer 15

Peterson and Peterson (1959) - used interference task (counting backwards in 3s) to prevent rehearsal, pps had to remember trigram of 3 consonants for different time intervals, correct recall was likely after a few seconds but performance decreased significantly after 15-18 seconds

Question 16

what is the capacity of the short-term memory?

Answer 16

5-9 items (using rehearsal, suggested by digit span experiments)
(Miller, 1956 - ‘the magical number seven, plus or minus two’)

Question 17

how is information retrieved from the short-term memory?

Answer 17

largely based on a rapid sequential scan of stored information
rehearsal maintains information and builds memory trace into LTM
as more information is input into the store, information which is old or has a weaker memory trace is displaced and decays

Question 18

how is information encoded in the long-term memory?

Answer 18

as semantic and temporal (but also acoustic and visual) - depends on rehearsal or a form of association between new and pre-existing knowledge stored there

Question 19

what is the duration of the long-term memory?

Answer 19

potentially a lifetime, especially for faces and names

Question 20

what study demonstrates the lengthy duration of the long-term memory?

Answer 20

Bahrick et al. (1975) - 400 pps aged 17-74 tested on names and faces of students in their high school yearbooks, identification was still 70-80% accurate 48 years after leaving school

Question 21

what is the capacity of the long-term memory?

Answer 21

potentially limitless

Question 22

what study demonstrates the potentially limitless capacity of the long-term store?

Answer 22

Brady et al. (2008) - showed pps 2500 objects over 5.5 hours and then showed them pairs of objects and asked them to identify which one they had seen, identification of original object was 92% when paired with different object and 88% when paired with similar object

Question 23

how is information retrieved from the long-term memory?

Answer 23

using a semantic and temporal search - it was suggested that multiple copies of a memory were retained in the long-term store, and retrieving a partial copy of a memory trace can help us access a more complete copy through association

Question 24

what study demonstrates information is retrieved using association from the long-term memory?

Answer 24

Atkinson and Shiffrin (1965) - graduate student initially couldn’t recall capital of Washington but when he recalled capital of Oregon he could recall capital of Washington because he had learned them together

Question 25

what is the serial position effect?

Answer 25

demonstrated by Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) - recall of information at the beginning (primacy effect) and end (recency effect) of a list is higher than in the middle of the list words at beginning have chance to be rehearsed and transferred to LTM, words at end of list displaced memory trace for middle words so they were left in STM

Question 26

evidence for STM and LTM being separate structures - case studies of brain damaged patients?

Answer 26

Henry Molaison suffered anterograde amnesia after brain surgery for epilepsy which caused impairment to his LTM but his STM was mostly intact - affected differentially perhaps because in different regions of brain Clive Wearing - LTM impairment after encephalitis but STM was unaffected, showing distinction between them however, subjects and nature of these injuries are unique so may not be generalisable based on individual cases

Question 27

evidence for STM and LTM being separate structures - Baddeley (1966)?

Answer 27

showed that two stores use different types of coding as people make different mistakes when recalling from them - lab experiment on sequential recall of 10 words which were acoustically or semantically related, found semantically related words were more difficult to recall from LTM than acoustically related ones

Question 28

evidence for STM and LTM being separate structures - Glanzer and Cunitz (1966)?

Answer 28

showed that getting participants to do a displacement task eg. counting backwards in 3s after a serial-position task removed the recency effect but kept the primacy effect therefore STM was affected but not LTM

Question 29

evidence for STM and LTM being separate structures - Rundus (1971)?

Answer 29

showed that speeding up the reading of words in a serial-position task removed the primacy effect but not the recency effect therefore LTM affected but not STM

Question 30

weaknesses of multi-store model of memory - overly simplistic view of long-term memory?

Answer 30

Milner et al. (1962) taught HM to perform a task where he traced a shape while watching his hand in a mirror - he got better with practice but could never remember learning the skill Kent Cochrane who had memory loss after a motorcycle accident could recall facts but not personal life events suggests we have one long-term store for memory of practised skills and factual information, and another for autobiographical events (procedural and declarative memory)

Question 31

weaknesses of multi-store model of memory - failure to address dynamic nature of short-term memory?

Answer 31

MSM assumed capacity of short-term store is unaffected by type of task we are performing duel task experiments = compete for same cognitive resource as they are similar (two verbal or visual) or different cognitive resources because they are different (one verbal one visual) they show that we perform poorly when dealing with similar tasks but better when dealing with different tasks

Question 32

weaknesses of multi-store model of memory - emphasis on rehearsal when transferring information from short-term to long-term memory?

Answer 32

rehearsal is used to remember things, but it isn't essential for permanent learning we can remember information without consciously trying to learn it, and other strategies like imagery leave strong memory traces without using rehearsal

Question 33

issues and debates - use of psychological knowledge in society?

Answer 33

rehearsal can reinforce learned information which can be used in education to help students learn effectively Butler and Roediger (2007) - found significant evidence that short recall tests reinforced knowledge for long-term memory of lecture content given to participants

Question 34

issues and debates - reductionism?

Answer 34

criticised for being too simplistic - proposes that memory has very different stores which underplays ways that different memory systems are connected

Question 35

issues and debates - ethics?

Answer 35

case studies of brain-damaged patients are often anonymised using initials to protect patient identities and maintain their right to privacy however, individuals in high-profile cases like Clive Wearing can't be anonymised which can cause the issue of privacy being violated

Question 36

issues and debates - understanding of how psychological knowledge has developed over time?

Answer 36

development of this memory model, while it has limitations, led to better and more precise theories of memory being proposed

Question 37

supporting evidence - Rundus (1971)?

Answer 37

gave pps serial position recall tasks with some words in each list repeated one or more times - the more times a word was repeated, the more likely it was to be recalled supports idea of rehearsal

Question 38

contradictory evidence - Craik and Tulving (1975)?

Answer 38

asked pps questions about a series of words, some about the appearance and some about the meaning in unexpected recall task, pps recognised more words where they had processed the meaning than the sound or appearance, even though all words were visible for the same amount of time and they weren't deliberately learning them suggests rehearsal isn't essential for encoding information - way info is processed is also important