The MSM shows that information first arrives at the senses. If attention is focused on it, then it is transferred to short-term memory. It demonstrates information is maintained in STM through rehearsal, otherwise it will decay or may be displaced by new information. Increasing rehearsal leads to transfer from STM to LTM concluding that the more rehearsal, the better information is remembered.
A strength of this model would be there is general agreement that there is an STM/STM difference, and this is well supported by the experiential evidence. The MSM is also the basis of many late models, even if they were then divided into further STM and LTM stores.
However, The model of memory has been criticized for its simplicity. It does not sufficiently explain LTM, as rehearsal doesn’t explain all LTM memories, e.g flashbulb memories. The MSM is over simplified and in practice, there are no clear differences between stores of memory. It presents a passive view of memory and cannot account for active processes such as reconstruction.
Research shows that memory does consist of a series of different stores that are linked by rehearsal, as described by the MSM. However, there is more to memory than this, which is explained in other models of memory. For example, the WM is a refinement of the MSM, describing what is happening in immediate storage in terms of a further set of stores specialised for auditory and visual information.
The working memory model was proposed by Baddely and Hitch to represent short-term memory in terms of further sub-divisions. WM consists of 3 components: Central executive, phonological loop and a visuo-spatial sketchpad. The Central executive acts like attention and has limited capacity. The phonological loop deals with auditory information and preserves the order of information. Visuo-spatial sketchpad stores visual and spatial information when engaged in such tasks. The model explains how simultaneous performance of two visual tasks interfere with each other, but not when one task is visual and the other auditory.
A strength of this model would be that the model is supported by empirical evidence. It is supported by a further experiment showing that dual task performance is reduced when both tasks involve the same component. This is hard to explain in the MSM model. This model explains how we can do two things at once if they involve different stores and why we have trouble doing two things involving the same store. It describes rehearsal as one component, which makes more sense compared to the central importance given in the multi-store model.
A criticism of this model may be that the description of the central executive is vague and there may be more than one component within in.
