b. The multi-store is the notion that memory is divided into three kinds of store (sensory memory, short-term memory and long term memory). It is often assumed that attention is used to select some information from sensory memory for processing in the short term store, whereas verbal rehearsal is involved when information is transferred from the short term memory store to the long term memory store. It is increasingly doubted that there is a single long-term memory store.
c. Discuss research evidence associated with the multi store model
The multi-store is the notion that memory is divided into three kinds of store (sensory memory, short-term memory and long term memory). It is often assumed that attention is used to select some information from sensory memory for processing in the short term store, whereas verbal rehearsal is involved when information is transferred from the short term memory store to the long term memory store. It is increasingly doubted that there is a single long-term memory store.
Studies have been made to prove to argue that there are separate memory stores. Peterson and Peterson did a study of the duration of short-term memory. Participants were shown a triagram consisting of three consonants. The participants knew that they would have to recall the numbers in the correct order. Recall was required after a delay of 3,6,9,12,15 or 18 seconds. The participants counted backwards in threes from a random 3-digit number. They found that there was a rapid increase in forgetting from STM as the time delay increased. This suggests that information is lost rapidly from STM. However this study used an artificial stimulus, which lack meaning. They also only looked at one kind of stimulus.
Jacob’s investigated how much information can be held in short-term memory. In Jacob’s study participants were presented with a sequence of letters or digits, followed by serial recall (repeating letters in the same order). His findings were that short-term memory had a span of between 5 to 9 items. The capacity of STM is not determined much by nature of the information to be learned but the by the size of the STM span. However this study lacks mundane realism, letters and numbers are not very meaningful. Baddeley looked at both short and long term memory and studied encoding. Baddely tested to see whether acoustic coding (based on sound of word) is used in STM, whereas semantic coding (based on the meaning of the word) is used in LTM. The procedure was that four types of lists were shown acoustically similar, semantically similar, acoustically dissimilar and semantically dissimilar. Baddeley found that acoustically similar and acoustically dissimilar had the most errors, this shows that nature of encoding in STM and LTM is different and STM is acoustic not semantic. Once again this study lacks mundane realism and there are more codes than just semantic and acoustic. All these studies need to take into account ecological validity, whereby these studies wouldn’t happen in the real world.
The case study about Clive Wearing also shows that certain diseases or disorders can affect a persons memory. Clive wearing had amnesia and he can’t convert STM in LTM. It is very rare and amnesia damages part of the brain. In Clive Wearings case he awaken fresh after certain amounts of time. His hepicanvas has been effected by the amnesia, he sees things for the first time however he remembers skills that he had learnt before he had got the amnesia. He remembers how to speak, write, walk, read etc. However there are problems which need to be accounted with case studies, people develop things in different ways. You can’t generalise them you can’t use one case study on a whole community. Also they are subjective, a biased view of the patients and their behaviour.
However there are other models of memory, there is the level of processing theory which is the extent to which something for example words is processed, not in terms of how much processing is done, but in terms of how much meaning is extracted. Shallow processing focuses on the superficial features of information. In contrast, deep processing focuses on the meaning of the information and generally leads to a better long-term memory. The multi store model can’t account for depth of processing research consisted with level of processing. Craik and Lockhart put forward this alternative theory to the multi store model. They argued that the concept of rehearsal is not sufficient to account for long-term memory as evidence shows that the cognitive processes operating at the time of learning determine what is stored in long-term memory. There is also the working memory model proposed by Baddeley and Hitch, which is another alternative to the multi store model. However the multi store model provided this model.
