The MSM of memory

Question 1

AO1: what is the MSM

Answer 1

it is a representation of how memory works in terms of the sensory register, STM and LTM

Question 2

AO1: sensory register

Answer 2

coded: echoic- acoustically
iconic- visually
capacity: echoic- sentence
iconic- less than 4 items
duration: echoic- less than 4 seconds
iconic- less than 1 second
forgetting: decay

Question 3

AO1: STM

Answer 3

coded- acoustically
capacity- 7 plus or minus 2 items
duration- less than 30 seconds
forgetting- decay or displacement

Question 4

AO1: LTM

Answer 4

coded- semantically
capacity- too big to measure
duration- maybe a lifetime
forgetting- decay or inference

Question 5

AO3: strength- research support

limitation- artificial stimuli

Answer 5

P: research support (Baddely) of coding in the STM
E: acoustically similar/dissimilar, semantically similar/dissimilar experiment
E: found when using STM they mixed up words that sound similar (codes acoustically) and when using LTM they mixed up words that have similar meaning (codes semantically)
L: this proves the STM and LTM are seperate
HOWEVER:
artificial stimuli was used, which meant there was no meaning to participants and makes the experiment low in ecological validity

Question 6

AO3: strength- case study

Limitation- low in population validity

Answer 6

P: case study of Clive Wearing
E/E: he had a virus which gave him amnesia and could only remember information for 20/30 seconds but he could recall information from the past. He was also unable to transfer information from STM to LTM but could retrieve information.
L: supports the idea that memories are formed by passing information from one store to the next in a linear fashion and that damage
to any part of the MSM can cause memory impairment. This is in line with
the prediction made by the model.
HOWEVER,
only based on one person so low population validity and can’t be generalised to the target population

Question 7

AO3: limitation- there is more than one type of LTM

Answer 7

P: follow up research shows there is more than one type of LTM
E/E: episodic (events), procedural (knowledge of how to do things), semantic (general knowledge)
L: research into MSM is flawed

Question 8

AO3: limitation- unitary STM

Answer 8

P: unitary STM
E: research shows there must be one or more short term stores to process visual information and one to process auditory information
E: The WMM suggests that the STM isn’t unitary. The WMM proposed by
Baddeley and Hitch (1974) showed that short term memory is more than
just one simple unitary store and comprises different components (e.g.
central executive, phonological loop)
L: This suggests that the STM isn’t unitary as initially suggested which
shows that the research into the MSM is flawed