Outline and Evaluate the Multi Store Model of Memory.

The multi store model of memory was first introduced by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) It is a structural model that suggests that memory consists of 3 different stores of memory. Firstly Sensory memory. This lasts for a fraction of a second and we use it to focus on specific stimuli, such as focusing on a specific person’s voice in a loud environment. It has 3 main parts, the iconic (visual), echoic (sound) and haptic (feeling/touch). This information moves to your short term memory. The short term memory has little capacity (7 plus or minus 2 items) and a short duration, so if information is not rehearsed, it can be forgotten. The STM is encoded mainly acoustically (sound). When information from the STM is rehearsed it is moved to the Long Term Memory. This had an unlimited capacity and its duration is up to a lifetime. The LTM is semantically encoded (meaning). Interference may occur for words similar in meaning, and sound or spelling, for example for 2 brothers named Jack and Joe others may get the names mixed up because they have similar meaning and both begin with J and so are stored similarly in the LTM.

Research evidence for the existence of sensory memory can be found in the studies of psycholigists Baddeley and Sperling. Baddely (1968) investigated the iconic store. He had the hypothesis that the iconic store is present so we can view things smoothly in one motion, rather than a jumpy one which would make things difficult to see and/or understand. The best example for this is when we watch an animated film, in reality, it is just hundreds of pictures, but we dont see it this way, we are able to easily view the cartoon as a steady flow, rather than loads of images put together. For the echoic store, the fact that we put together and understand sentences easily, rather than finding meaning in each individual word.

For these type of studies, problems arise because everybodies minds are different with different memory capabilities, personalities etc so results are nearly impossible to generalise to all people.

Research evidence for the existence of a distinction between STM & LTM can be found in Glanzer & Cunitz (1966). This was an experiment in which participants were asked to recall
a series of words and recall them in any order (free recall). In another condition the participants had a distractor task, where they would count back in 3 's from 100. They found in the original condition there was a primacy effect (first on the list) and recency effect (last on the list) as expected. In the 2nd condition, they found that the recency effect had gone due to the distractor task.

Other evidence for the distinction between STM & LTM comes from patients with brain damage. For instance Clive Wearing, who suffers from Anterograde Amnesia which is a condition that doesn't allow new memories to transfer into LTM. The differences in capacity, duration, encoding and forgetting can sometimes be shown experimentally. However, forgetting in LTM is difficult to demonstrate because it is said the only way of forgetting things from the LTM is by decay or brain damage.

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Research evidence for the capacity of STM comes from Jacobs (1887) He introduced the Digit Span Technique. This is where participants have to recall a series of digits in the correct order (serial recall), he then increases the number of digits in the sequence until the participant can no longer recall any digits. He found people generally were able to recall an average of 7, plus or minus 2 digits. However it has been recognized that you can remember 7 plus or minus 2 items, which may include several digits or letters in one chunk. It is easier to recall smaller chunks because they contain less information and take less time to rehearse. For this reason, Arabic speaking countries may remember less chunks, because their pronounciation time for letters and numbers is more than in the English language. It is also easier if the chunks contain short words, because they can be semantically recognized by the LTM.

Research evidence for the duration of STM comes from Peterson and Peterson. They showed participants trigrams and asked them to recall them after a time delay, and increasing the time delay up to 18 seconds. They found that when rehearsal is prevented, recall was low, because the information had left the STM and not gone into the LTM because there was no rehearsal.

Research evidence for differences in encoding between STM & LTM comes from Conrad (1964) He made up an experiment to test the theory that the STM is encoded acoustically. He made two lists, one with acoustically similar words and one with acoustically dissimilar words. The participants were asked to study the list and then recall them in the correct order. The acoustically similar words were harder to recall because interference occurred. The same results happened when he did the experiment with semantically similar and dissimilar words.

There are some problems with this evidence, the experiment used words, and due to everybody’s minds and experiences being different, some words may have had an emotional effect on the participant and affected their results.

The Multistore model was a very useful first attempt at defining memory. However, there are many problems with the model. First, the human mind could never be simplified into just 3 sections because it is far too complex. Some words may have an emotional effect on some people and some words are more difficult to remember than others, especially in foreign languages. Most of the studies were lab experiments, which lack ecological validity and mundane realism, meaning that these are not things people will do in their day to day lives, and participants may have got bored, so guessed or got better with practice, so the results from most of these experiments cannot be comparable to people in their day to day lives.

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Stephanie Porras

26th of Mar 2013

Summary: Outline of the Multi Store Model describing its features, as well as details of some research that both supports and refutes the model. Some attempt to evaluate its contribution to understanding of how memory is stored and transferred to LTM. Improvement of this essay can be gained by planning and structuring the argument, starting with an introduction, then introducing the outline of the model, evidence for and against the model by considering relevant research, and finishing with a conclusion on its contribution to the area. One or two typos - otherwise sound on grammar and style.

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