Psychology Describe and Evaluate the mulitstore model of memory.

by katiekatie123098 (student)

Psychology – Describe and Evaluate the mulitstore model of memory? Essay 12 marks (timed 25 mins )

The multistore model by Attkinson and Schiffren (1965) looked at the idea that memory had 3 unique separate stores, the Sensory store, in which all information goes into and can then either be lost or with attention move to the short term memory store in which again information can be lost but lasts for a longer duration of about 20 to 30 seconds if the information is then rehearsed in can enter into long term memory which has an infinite duration and capacity suggesting that we do in fact remember all the information we rehearse and retain in long term memory. The model also shows the order or sequence that information goes through.

There are other theories to support this model, for example Peterson and Peterson (1959) conducted an experiment in which a group of students were asked to recall “trigrams” or words with 3 letters while counting backwards in their head until they saw a light in order to prevent rehearsal, the results showed that the longer the interval the less words people could remember which indicated that short term memory has a limited duration when there is no rehearsal also showing that there are differences between short term and long term memory in terms of duration.

However one could argue ...

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However one could argue against Peterson and Peterson’s experience as there is no concrete evidence to suggest that the students were actually counting backwards as this was done in their head, some of them could of simple gone a long with the idea of the theory without actually testing it out.

The multistore model suggests that long term memory is stored for infinity however this would mean that we did not forget anything that we had rehearsed, however some would argue that they cannot remember something that they had once rehearsed, such as their 11 plus exam, or the faces of ones they had gone to school with over 30 years ago, however Bah rick et al.;s conducted an experiment in which he used a set of ex high school students aged from 17 to 74 in which over 90 % of students could eventually recognize the name and face of students that had once left a while ago, this suggests the idea of rehearsal through seeing one s class mates on a daily basis does stay in a person’ s mind however students that had left 8 years ago showed only 30% in terms of accuracy that long term memory can be lost, also after being shown a name and picture if a person cannot be recalled this could indicate that the memory is in fact now lost.

In conclusion there are many factors to agree and disagree with Atkinson and Schifrin’s Multi-store model but there are some strong factors and other experiments conducted to support the multi-store model and the idea that we do in fact have separate stores in our mind and other arguments to contradict the model such as not remembering certain things after being given clues to help us retrieve the information.