Memory

Memory

1. Multi-Store Model

   • Atkinson + Shiffrin 1968 influenced by william james model
   • memory is made up of a series of stores
   • Sensory store
     • Duration: half a second
     • 100th of all information reaches consciousness only 20th reaches stable storage
     • different stores for each sense
       • Iconic
         • Sperling (1960)
       • echoic
         • Triesman 1964
       • Tactile memory
         • Bliss et al 1966
       • Olfactory memory
         • Engen and Ross 1973
     • Information decays if not attended to
   • Short Term Store
     • Information gets displaced/forgot if not rehearsed
     • Capacity limited - 7+/-2 chunks
       • Miller, 1956
     • Duration 15-30 seconds. Easily disrupted
       • Atkinson and Shiffrin 1971
       • recency effect
     • Encoding
       • codes all information acoustically,
         • Conrad (1964) participants were asked to recall a list of consonants. Acoustic Confusion occured eg: B's were mistaken for P's 62 times
       • also coded information visually and according to semantics (meaning)
         • Shulman (1970)
   • Long Term Store
     • Information from STM gets encoded here through rehearsal
     • Interference: new information interferes with old
     • Capacity unlimited
     • Classification of information in LTM
       • Bower 1975
       • Spatial information
       • Knowledge of physical world
       • Beliefs about people, ourselves, norms, values & goals
       • Motor skills, problem solving, language skills
     • Duration: minutes to years depends how information was encoded
       • Semantic: meaningful information is more likely to be remembered
         • Craik (1977)
     • mental imagery aids recall
       • Bower 1972 ‘imagers’ / experiemental group recalled 80% of target words, compared to non-imagers/control group’ 33%

2. processes that are used to acquire, store, retain and later retrieve information

3. William James

   • 1890
   • 1st proposed memory was made up of different systems
     • Primary
       • present, conscious thoughts + influences
     • Secondary
       • information from the past

4. levels of processing model of memory

   • Craik and Lockhart, 1972
   • concentrates on the processes involved in memory rather than the structure
   • memory is just a by-product of the depth of processing of information & there is no clear distinction between STM & LTM
   • Useful in everyday life
   • describes rather than explains why deep processing leads to better LTM than shallow processing
     • Eysenck (1990)

5. Limitations

   • oversimplified
     • suggests SM + LM  operate in a single, uniform fashion. However, working Model of Memory  proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) showed that SM is more than just one simple unitary store and comprises different components.
     • different types of long-term memory have been identified. episodic (memories of events), procedural (knowledge of how to do things) and semantic (general knowledge) Unlikely the types are all stored in a single unitary store.
   • suggests rehearsal is important to transfer information into LTM but it isnt essential - able to recall information which we did not rehearse
     • (e.g. swimming)

6. Strengths

   • Accounts for serial position effect : primary + recency
     • Murdock (1962) word lists free recall words early in the list were put into long term memory (primacy effect) because the person has time to rehearse the word, and words from the end went into short term memory (recency effect)
   • influential - generated a lot of research into memory
   • supported by studies of amnesiacs
     • eg: HM case study.  HM  has marked problems in long-term memory after brain surgery in 1953. Doesn't remember much over the last 45 years - only a few personal (death of mother and father) and public events (vietnam war) SM is still fully intact.