One model of memory is the multi-store model, proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin. It is a structural model and explains how memory processes work, by information passing from store to store in a linear way. The model states that there are three main stores: the sensory memory, the short term memory and the long term memory, of which the short-term memory and long term memory are unitary stores.
The sensory memory store, at any given point, is taking in lots of information, through the senses. The duration of this information lasts just milliseconds and is encoded in all ways.
Attention is needed to transport information from the sensory memory store to the short term memory store.
The short term memory store has a capacity of 7+-2 items, and information is mainly encoded acoustically. The duration of the information in the short-term memory store is about 18-30 seconds.
Rehearsal is needed to move information from the short term memory store to the long term memory store.
The long-term memory store has an unlimited capacity with the duration of the information to be recalled being a lifetime. The information is encoded semantically.
To evaluate, a strength of the multi-store model is it is supported by case study evidence. Clive Wearing suffered from acute amnesia after contracting the herpes virus. He no longer has access to his long-term memory, but his short-term memory was intact. This proves that there must be different stores for each type of memory, and thus proves that there is different and separate stores, which is what the multi-store model proposed.
However, due to case studies being unique cases and individuals, they do not represent normal circumstances and behaviour, and therefore the findings can not be generalised to the greater population. This is a weakness of this research method, and thus in this way, we cannot fully support the multi-store model of memory with the case study evidence as what was found to have been supportive may not be the case for the rest of the population, making the model not reliable.
A weakness of the multi-store model is that it is too simple. There is a lot of evidence suggesting the long-term memory is not a unitary store, like the multi-store model tells it is, but that it is actually made up of different stores which deal with different types of memories for example, procedural, episodic, semantic, musical ect. The case study of Clive Wearing also supports this as he lost most of his long term memory but could still remember how to play musical instruments, and tie his shoes laces. These memories would come from the musical and precedural memory, suggesting that the long-term memory i not just one single unit, or in Clive Wearing's case he would have not been able to remember these things because they would have been damaged alongside his other long-term memory stores.
Furthermore, another strength of the multi-store model of memory is that there is experimental evidence, carried out by Glanzer and Cunitz, to back it up. Participants were given 20 words to learn. The psychologists found that the first seven or so were typically remembered, along with the last seven or so, but the middle ones were not. They explained this as the primary and recency effect; the first set of words had been successfully rehearsed and moved into the long-term memory, whilst the last seven were fresh in the short-term memory when asked to recall them. However, the middle ones has been 'lost' in the processing and transferring of the other words, as the short-term memory has a limited capacity and words were continually been added as the participant tried to remember, but they were not rehearsed sufficiently to move them into the long-term memory. This supports the multi-store model because it proposes that the short-term memory has a limited capacity, which the model shows that it does, and that there are different stores of memory which information passes through, also stated in the multi-store model of memory.

	Created by moll. over 10 years ago

Note on Plan for Outline and evaluate the models of memory (12 marks), created by moll. on 24/12/2013.