Memory

Memory

1. Multi-store Model

   • A representation of how memory works in terms of three stores, how it is transferred linearly and how it is remembered and forgotten.
     • Sensory Register
       • Temporarily stores info from the senses in different stores
         • Crowder found that the iconic store could only hold info for milliseconds whereas the echoic store could hold info for 2/3 seconds.
         • Sound = echoic
         • Visual = iconic
         • Feeling = haptic
       • Unless we pay attention the info is lost through spontaneous decay.
       • High capacity
         • Sperling used the whole and partial report technique, which uses a chart containing three rows of letters, which he displayed and then asked participants to recall. And during the partial report he would play a tone with each row displayed and when they were asked to recall letters in each line. Participants remembered more in the partial report.
       • Very brief duration of milliseconds
     • Short-term
       • Temporarily stores info using mainly acoustic coding
       • Duration of 30 seconds
         • Peterson and Peterson showed participants nonsense trigrams and asked them to accurately recall them after an interference task. After 3 seconds recall was 80%. After 6 seconds it was <50% and after 18 seconds it was <10%.
       • Capacity of 7 +/- 2 chunks
         • Jacobs used digit span to measure the capacity of the STM by saying a list of numbers or words and participants would have to recall them. A graph was plotted and it showed we can hold 7+/- 2 chunks.
     • Long-term
       • Unlimited Capacity
         • This impossible to test but appears unlimited.
       • Unlimited Duration
         • Bahrick et al asked 400 US past high school students to free recall, photo recognise, photo match and name recognise their classmates from 1-48 years ago. The results showed 30% free recall accuracy after 3 years and 80% name recognition after 48 years which supports the idea the LTM can store some types of information for a very long time.
       • Mainly semantic coding
     • Encoding is the way in which information is represented in the memory store.
       • Baddeley asked 75 participants to listen to one of 4 lists that were either acoustically/semantically similar/dissimliar and recall the words. They found in the STM the least errors were made in the acoustically similar list and the LTM (tested using a 20 minute interference task) the least mistakes were made in the semantically similar list.