Give a brief account of the multi-storemodel of memory and consider its strengths and weaknesses.
Give a brief account of the multi-store model of memory and consider its strengths and weaknesses.
(18 marks)
Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) claimed that the memory system was made up of three distinct stores. Sensory memory where information can be stored for a very brief moment of time. STM, that has very little capacity and information can only be stored for a short duration of time and finally LTM which potentially has unlimited capacity and duration. If a person’s attention if focused on material in sensory memory, then it is transferred to STM. Atkinson and Shiffrin also implied that transfer of information from STM to LTM was through a process called ‘rehearsal’. They proposed a direct link between STM and the strength of LTM, claiming that the more the information is rehearsed the better it is remembered.