psychology: memory

the multi-store model of memory

• Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin’s (1968, 1971) multi-store model
describes how information flows through the memory system
• the model suggests that memory is made up of three stores linked by
processing

Sensory register
Iconic Retrieval

Echoic
Stimulus from Short-term Prolonged
Long-term
the environment Other memory (STM) maintenance memory (LTM)
sensory rehearsal

stores

Response Maintenance rehearsal

(forgetting) (rehearsal loop)
 sensory register
• coding: according to stimulus
• duration: less than half a second
• capacity: unlimited
• a stimulus from the environment will pass into the sensory registers
• store for each of the 5 senses
• two main stores:
• iconic - visual information
• echoic - auditory information
• very little of what goes into the sensory register passes further into the memory system, but it will
if you pay attention to it, so the key process is attention
 short-term memory (STM)
• coding: acoustic
• duration: 30 seconds
• capacity: 7 ± 2 (usually 5 than 9)
• limited capacity store, because it can only contain a certain number of ‘things’ before forgetting
takes place.
• forgotten unless rehearsed
• maintenance rehearsal occurs when we repeat (rehearse) material to ourselves over and over
again
• we can keep the information in our STMs as long as we rehearse it - if we rehearse it long enough,
it passes into long-term memory (LTM)
 long-term memory (LTM)
• coding: semantic (i.e. in terms of meaning)
• duration: unlimited
• capacity: unlimited
• potentially permanent memory store for information that has been rehearsed for a prolonged
time
• e.g. Bahrick et al. (1975) found that many of their participants were able to recognise the names
and faces of their school classmates almost 50 years after graduating
• when we want to recall it, it has to be transferred back into STM by a process called retrieval -
according to the MSM, this is true of all our memories. None of them are recalled directly from
LTM
 evaluation - supporting research evidence
P: A strength of the multi-store model of memory is that there is research support.
E: Murdock (1962) found that when asked to recall a set of word. Words at the
beginning (primacy effect) and the end (recency effect) are recalled more than
words in the middle.
E: This supports the MSM as it shows words at the beginning are recalled due to
prolonged rehearsal and words at the end are recalled due to maintenance
rehearsal.
L: Therefore, this increases the credibility of the MSM.
 evaluation - artificial tasks
P: A weakness is that research supporting the MSM use artificial tasks.
E: For example, Murdock (1962), use word lists to test recall of memory.
E: In real life, we tend to recall things other than word lists such as faces, places,
directions etc., so research that supports the MSM may not study everyday memory
and have low ecological validity.
L: As a result, the MSM may not be a good explanation of how memory works in
everyday life.
 evaluation - more than one type of STM and
LTM
P: A weakness is that MSM suggests the STM and LTM are unitary stores however
this is not the case.
E: For example, Shallice and Warrington (1970) studied amnesia patient, KF, and
were ale to see that he struggled to learn verbal information but much better at
learning visual information. Other studies even showed that there could be another
short-term store for non-verbal sounds.
E: This suggests that there are separate visual and auditory stores which the MSM
does not account for. Additionally, there is evidence to suggest there are 3 types of
LTM (episodic, semantic, procedural) which is also unaccounted for.
L: Therefore, this suggests the working memory model may better explain memory.
 Evaluation: Supporting research evidence
• A major strength of the MSM is that it is supported by research
studies that show that STM and LTM are indeed qualitatively different.
For example, Baddeley (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. The
strength of this study is that it clearly shows that coding in STM is
acoustic and in LTM it is semantic. So they are different, and this
supports the MSM’s view that these two memory stores are separate
and independent. Further support is given by all the studies of coding,
capacity and duration we encountered in the previous spread.
 Evaluation: There is more than one type of
STM
• The MSM states that STM is a unitary store, in other words there is only one
type of short-term memory. However, evidence from people suffering from a
clinical condition called amnesia shows that this cannot be true. For example,
Shallice and Warrington (1970) studied a patient with amnesia known as KF.
They found that KF’s short-term memory for digits was very poor when they
read them out loud to him. But his recall was much better when he was able to
read the digits to himself. Further studies of KF and other people with amnesia
showed that there could even be another short-term store for non-verbal
sounds (such as noises). The unitary STM is a limitation of the MSM because
research shows that at the very least there must be one short-term store to
process visual information and another one to process auditory information.
The working memory model (see page 52) includes these separate stores.
 Evaluation: There is more than one type of
rehearsal
• According to the MSM, what matters in rehearsal is the amount of it that
you do. So the more you rehearse some information (a list of words, for
example), the more likely you are to transfer it to LTM and remember it for a
long time. However, Craik and Watkins (1973) found that this prediction is
wrong. What really matters about rehearsal is the type. They discovered that
there are two types of rehearsal. Maintenance rehearsal is the type
described in the MSM, but this does not transfer information into LTM. It just
maintains it in STM, hence the name. Elaborative rehearsal is needed for
long-term storage. This occurs when you link the information to your existing
knowledge, or you think about what it means. This is a very serious
limitation of the MSM because it is another research ¬finding that cannot be
explained by the model.
 Evaluation: Artificial materials
• In everyday life, we form memories related to all sorts of useful things
- people’s faces, their names, facts, places, and so on. But a lot of the
research studies that provide support for the MSM used none of these
materials. Instead, they used digits, letters, and sometimes words.
They even used what are known as consonant syllables that have no
meaning (such as ZLG).
• Consider: Why is this issue a limitation of the MSM? Can you think of
a better alternative to these materials? Can you then explain why this
alternative may present problems of its own?
 Evaluation: There is more than one type of
LTM
• There is a lot of research evidence that LTM, like STM, is not a
unitary memory store. For example, we have one long-term store for
our memories of facts about the world, and we have a different one for
our memories of how to ride a bicycle. These different types of
memory are explained on the next spread.
• Consider: Explain exactly why this evidence presents a problem for
the multi-store model.
 research on coding
• Once information gets into the memory system, it is stored in different formats, depending on the memory
store. The process of converting information from one form to another is called coding. Alan Baddeley
(1966a, 1966b) gave different lists of words to four groups of participants to remember:
• Group 1 (acoustically similar): words sounded similar (e.g. cat, cab, can).
• Group 2 (acoustically dissimilar): words sounded different (e.g. pit, few, cow).
• Group 3 (semantically similar): words with similar meanings (e.g. great, large, big).
• Group 4 (semantically dissimilar): words that all had different meanings (e.g. good, huge, hot).
• Participants were shown the original words and asked to recall them in the correct order. When they had to
do this recall task immediately after hearing it (STM recall), they tended to do worse with acoustically similar
words. If participants were asked to recall the word list after a time interval of 20 minutes (LTM recall), they
did worse with the semantically similar words. This suggests that information is coded semantically in LTM.
 evaluation – artificial stimuli
• One limitation of Baddeley’s study was that it used quite arti cial
stimuli rather than meaningful material. The word lists had no
personal meaning to participants. This means we should be cautious
about generalising the ndings to different kinds of memory task. For
example, when processing more meaningful information, people may
use semantic coding even for STM tasks. This suggests that the
ndings from this study have limited application.
 research on capacity – digit span
• How much information can STM hold at any one time, i.e. what is its
capacity? Joseph Jacobs (1887) developed a technique to measure digit
span. The researcher gives, for example, 4 digits and then the
participant is asked to recall these in the correct order out loud. If this is
correct the researcher reads out 5 digits and so on until the participant
cannot recall the order correctly. This determines the individual’s digit
span. Jacobs found that the mean span for digits across all participants
was 9.3 items. The mean span for letters was 7.3.
 research on capacity – span of memory and
chunking
• George Miller (1956) made observations of everyday practice.
For example, he noted that things come in sevens: there are 7
notes on the musical scale, 7 days of the week, 7 deadly sins,
and so on. This suggests that the span (or capacity) of STM is
about 7 items (plus or minus 2). However, Miller also noted
that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5
letters. They do this by chunking – grouping sets of digits or
letters into units or chunks.
 evaluation – lacking validity
• One limitation of Jacobs’s study is that it was conducted a long time
ago. Early research in psychology often lacked adequate control. For
example, some participants may have been distracted while they were
being tested so they didn’t perform as well as they might. This would
mean that the results might not be valid because there were
confounding variables that were not controlled. However, the results
of this study have been con rmed in other research, supporting its
validity.
 evaluation – not so many chunks
• One limitation of Miller’s research is that he may have overestimated
the capacity of STM. For example, Cowan (2001) reviewed other
research and concluded that the capacity of STM was only about four
chunks. This suggests that the lower end of Miller’s estimate ( ve
items) is more appropriate than seven items.
 research on coding – duration of STM
• Duration is the defining feature of STM. But how short is it exactly? Margaret and Lloyd
Peterson (1959) tested 24 undergraduate students. Each student took part in eight trials. A
‘trial’ is one test. On each trial the student was given a consonant syllable (also known as a
trigram, such as YCG) to remember and was also given a 3-digit number. The student was
then asked to count backwards from that 3-digit number until told to stop. This counting
backwards was to prevent any mental rehearsal of the consonant syllable (which would
increase the student’s memory for the consonant syllable). On each trial they were told to
stop after a different amount of time – 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 or 18 seconds. This is called the retention
interval. Their ndings are shown in the graph on the left. It suggests that STM may have a
very short duration indeed, unless we repeat something over and over again (i.e. verbal
rehearsal).
 research on coding – duration of LTM
• Harry Bahrick and colleagues (1975) studied 392 participants from the American state
of Ohio who were 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
participant’s high school yearbook; (2) free recall test where participants recalled all
the names of their graduating class. Participants who were tested within 15 years of
graduation were about 90% accurate in photo recognition. After 48 years, recall
declined to about 70% for photo recognition. Free recall was less good than
recognition. After 15 years this was about 60% accurate, dropping to 30% after 48
years. This shows that LTM can last a very long time indeed.
 evaluation – meaningless stimuli in STM
study
• A limitation of Peterson and Peterson’s study is that the stimulus
material was artificial. Trying to memorise consonant syllables does
not reflect most real-life memory activities where what we are trying
to remember is meaningful. So we might say that this study lacked
external validity. However, we do sometimes try to remember fairly
meaningless things, such as phone numbers, so the study is not totally
irrelevant.
 evaluation – high external validity
• One strength of Bahrick et al.’s study is that it has higher external
validity. Real-life meaningful memories were studied. When studies on
LTM have been conducted with meaningless pictures to be
remembered, recall rates were lower (e.g. Shepard 1967). The
downside of such real-life research is that confounding variables are
not controlled, such as the fact that Bahrick’s participants may have
looked at their yearbook photos and rehearsed their memory over the
years.
evaluation – criticising peterson and peterson
• One explanation for why we forget things in STM is that the memory
trace simply disappears if not rehearsed (spontaneous decay). An
alternative explanation is that the information in STM is displaced –
STM has a limited capacity and any new information will push out what
is currently there. In the study by Peterson and Peterson participants
counted down during the retention interval.
• Consider: Explain how this might cause displacement. In what way
might this mean that Peterson and Peterson’s study lacked internal
validity?