multi store model

Question 1

AO1

Answer 1

The first psychologists who attempted to explain how memory might work was Atkinson and Shiffrin, who developed the multi-store model.
Proposes that memory is divided into a number of stores, and information flows through a system - from one store to the other.
Each store has its own capacity and duration limits, and encodes information in different ways.
Information from one of the 5 senses first enters the sensory register - this store has unlimited capacity.
If paid attention to, this info will then be passed onto STM - this is a temporary store.
Maintenance rehearsal involves repeating information over and over, and this allows it to enter LTM.
The LTM store has unlimited capacity and duration & info here can be accessed by STM for use by the process of retrieval.
Coding is the process of transforming sensory input so that it can be registered in memory. There are different ways of encoding information in memory - by sound, visually, or by meaning.
Capacity is the process of holding or retaining information until it is needed.
Duration concerns how long the memory lasts for.

Question 2

AO3 - primacy-recency effect

Answer 2

Evidence from a researcher suggests that there are 2 main memory stores (LTM and STM). The serial position effect shows that words from the beginning and end of a list are better remembered than those from the middle. This is called the primacy-recency effect. Concluded that this supports the idea of STM and LTM being 2 separate and distinct memory stores.
Researchers also used brain scans to support MSM and found that different areas of the brain were active during the primary-recency tasks which shows that the stores of MSM are separate.

Question 3

AO3 - hippocampus removed

Answer 3

Researchers studied a man (HM) who had his hippocampus removed to treat his epilepsy. He was then unable to form new long-term memories, but could still form short-term memories. This therefore suggests that the store for long-term memory is separate to the store for short-term memory, providing evidence for the MSM.
However, this was a case study, so it may not be generalisable.

Question 4

AO3 - too simplistic

Answer 4

The MSM has been criticised for being too simplistic. It implies that long-term memory is a single store, however it has been found that there are different kinds of long-term memories that encode information in different ways which the MSM does not account for.
May be better explanations of memory, e.g. the working memory model which states that short-term memory consists of many different components.