Multi-store Model Of Memory

Question 1

Who was the Multi-Store Model of Memory (MSM) created by?

Answer 1

Atkinson & Shiffrin (1968)

Question 2

What is the information processing model of memory?

Answer 2

• Linear model: Information is shown to flow through the system in one direction

• Passive stores: The stores hold on to information before being passed on or lost

Question 3

What are the 3 Multi-store Model (MSM) of memory stores?

Answer 3

Sensory register, Short term memory and Long term memory

Question 4

What are the 3 features of each store?

Answer 4

Coding, Capacity and Duration

Question 5

What is coding?

Answer 5

The different information types/formats the brain uses to store memory

Question 6

What is capacity?

Answer 6

How much information can be held by a store

Question 7

What is duration?

Answer 7

How long information can be held in that store for before loss

Question 8

What stores are under cognitive control?

Answer 8

STM and LTM

Question 9

How does the sensory register gather information?

Answer 9

• Sensory information comes in through the senses (sight, taste, touch etc)
• Detected and recorded automatically
• First store to collect memory

Question 10

How is information passed on from the sensory register?

Answer 10

To the STM by paying attention

Question 11

What is the coding of the sensory register?

Answer 11

• Modality specific as it depends on the sense organ that the information comes from
• Different coding for different senses, e.g. Echoic coding for sound, Iconic coding for sight, Haptic for touch

Question 12

What is the capacity of the sensory register?

Answer 12

• Very large
• Has to contain all the sense impressions for all senses present
• Only what is paid attention to is passed to the STM

Question 13

What is the duration of the sensory register?

Answer 13

• Very short, as low as 250 milliseconds
• As so much info is held, it cannot be retained for long

Question 14

How is information lost going from the sensory register to the STM?

Answer 14

Attention isn’t paid to it

Question 15

What is the coding of the STM?

Answer 15

• Stored acoustically (in the form of sound/spoken words)

Question 16

What is the capacity of the STM and who suggested this?

Answer 16

• Miller
• 7 (+/- 2) so 5-9 items

Question 17

How to improve the capacity of STM, why is this?

Answer 17

• Chunking: making small groups of items
• As it reduces the number of items overall

Question 18

What is the duration of the STM, how can it be extended?

Answer 18

• Short (abt 18-30 seconds)
• Duration can be extended by verbal rehearsal (rehearsal loop)

Question 19

How is information passed from the STM to the LTM?

Answer 19

Rehearsal

Question 20

What are the two types of rehearsal?

Answer 20

• Elaborative rehearsal: Linking to information already in LTM
• Maintenance rehearsal: Repeating the information

Question 21

How is information passed back to the STM from the LTM?

Answer 21

Retrieval

Question 22

Which 2 ways can information be lost?

Answer 22

• Displacement (new information)

• Decay (lost over time)

Question 23

What needs to be done in order to use information from the LTM?

Answer 23

Needs to be passed back to STM via retrieval

Question 24

What is the coding of the LTM?

Answer 24

• Stored semantically (in the form of meaning)

Question 25

What is the Capacity of the LTM and how can info be lost?

Answer 25

• No limit has been found • Information can be lost as it is no longer accessible in the LTM

Question 26

What is the Duration of the LTM?

Answer 26

• Potentially unlimited

Question 27

What is the Coding of each store of the multi-store model of memory?

Answer 27

• Sensory register: Modality specific • STM: Acoustic • LTM: Semantic

Question 28

What is the Capacity of each store in the MSM of memory?

Answer 28

• Sensory register: Unlimited • STM: 7 +/- 2 items • LTM: Unlimited

Question 29

What is the Duration of each story in the MSM of memory?

Answer 29

• Sensory register: 250 ms • STM: 18-30 seconds • LTM: Forever

Question 30

What evidence is there that the STM and LTM stores are seperate processes?

Answer 30

• Glanzer and Cunitz • Asked participants to free recall lists in any order • Found recall was much stronger at the start and end of lists - First words retained by LTM (primary effect) - Most recent words being held by STM (recency effect) - Middle words were displaced by later words

Question 31

What study prooves that sensory memory is large?

Answer 31

• Sperling • Trained participants were presented with a 3 by 4 grid of letters • Were shown the grid for 1/20th of a second then had to recall one row • It was found that recall for a row was over 75% • This suggests that all rows were contained within the capacity of the iconic store, so sensory memory is large

Question 32

What study suggests the duration of sensory memory is <1 second?

Answer 32

• Sperling • When asked to recall all letters on the 3 by 4 grid, he found participants could only recall the first 4 or 5 letters • This suggests letters faded from sensory memory before attention could move them to STM

Question 33

What study suggests that coding in the STM is accoustic?

Answer 33

• Baddeley • Gave 4 word lists of 10 items to 4 participant groups: A) Accoustically similar B) Accoustically dissimilar C) Semantically similar D) Semantically dissimilar • Immediate recall was worst for list A • This shows that coding in STM is acoustic as similar sounds caused confusion in recall

Question 34

What study suggests that the capacity of the STM is very limited?

Answer 34

• Jacobs • Participants were presented with lists of letters or numbers • Participants had to recall the list • Capacity for letters shown to be around 7 items • Capacity for numbers shown to be around 9 items • This suggests that the capacity of the STM is very limited

Question 35

What study suggests that information is only maintained in STM for a few seconds before it disappears?

Answer 35

• Peterson and Peterson • Showed participants three-letter trigrams (e.g. HFD) • The participants had to count backwards for a few seconds as an interference task to stop maintenance rehearsal • Found after 18 seconds, recall was less than 10%

Question 36

What study suggests that coding in LTM is semantic?

Answer 36

• Baddeley's word list • Similarly to STM being acoustic, LTM is semantic • Recalling list C (semantically similar) was most difficult as the meanings were semnatically similar, causing confusion

Question 37

What study suggests that the capacity of the LTM is very large?

Answer 37

• Wagenaar • Created a diary of over 2400 events over the course of six years (including who, what, when and where) • When tested using these cues, he had a 75% recall of one particular critical detail after 1 year, 45% after 5 years, sense of remembering the event was 80% after 5 years

Question 38

What study suggests that the duration of LTM is very large?

Answer 38

• Bahrick • Around 400 participants aged 17-74 were tested for memory of old photographs and names of their school friends • Recall was 90% after 15 years, 80% after 48 years

Question 39

Cognitive experiments testing aspects of the MSM are often highly artificial, how is this a limitation? However?

Answer 39

• Lack in external validity • Low ecological validity, results collected in a lab environment may not be generalisable to natural situations • Lack of mundane realism as tasks are not like real-life situations • However may be the only way of clearly measuring memory and testing the limits

Question 40

Why must researchers make inferences and why is this a limitation?

Answer 40

• Models of memory cannot be directly observed • Inferences are educated guesses and could be incorrect

Question 41

What has later research demonstrated that limits the MSM?

Answer 41

• Neither STM or LTM are unitary stores • There are multiple types of STM and LTM - Better explained by the WMM