Describe and Evaluate the Multi-store model of Memory.

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Chloe-Louise Applewhite

Describe and evaluate the multi-store model of memory?

Atkinson and Shiffrins multi-store model consists of three hypothetical stores; the sensory Store, the short term memory and the long term memory.  They suggested that that, the Multi-store model (MSM) was linear, there for all information must go through all the stores. They also suggested information enters the system from the environment, through the several stores which are our five senses. They constantly receive information; most of this information doesn’t have much attention paid to it. There for if you focus attention on to the sensory stores; it is then transferred to the Short-term memory (STM) acoustically. Then the Information is then rehearsed; this then helps the information to be transferred from STM to the Long-term memory (LTM)

The information in the STM is very fragile and will decay very quickly, there for we can then rehearse information we want to remember. This on the multi-store model (MSM) is called the maintenance rehearsal loop. STM only had the capacity of 7+-2, the duration on STM is only 18-30 seconds. Therefore it you do not rehearse the information it will become displaced quickly by other information. The information that is maintained in STM is encoded verbally.

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Glanzer and Cunitz (1966) did a study trying to prove that memory can be separated in to three distinct stores. They gave participants a list of words and asked to recall the words in any order. Half of the participants were able to recall immediately (condition 1) the other half had to count backwards for 30 seconds, they did this as an interference task. The results showed that condition 1 participants showed primacy effect, which is the words they heard first, and the recency effect which is where they only recalled the last few words in the list. Participants in ...

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