Multi-Store Model of Memory - created from Mind Map

Capacity The amount of information that can be held in the memory at any one time Sensory Memory: Visual information that are being experienced at the given moment. Short-term Memory: 7+-2 items: Miller proposed that most people have a digit span of 7 +-2 items. However he suggested if we put information into chuncks then we can remember 7+-2 chunks. Long term Memory: Unlimited: Luria studied a Russian journalist who appeared to have a limitless memory capacity. He could remember nearly every detail of his life.

Duration The length of time that memories can be held Sensory Memory: Holds information for a fraction of a second Short-term Memory: Up to 30 seconds: Peterson and Peterson showed participants trigrams asked to recall them after a distraction (counting backwards in 3's). They were able to recall about 80% after 3 seconds and only 10% after 18 seconds. Long-term Memory: From a few minutes to a lifetime: Bahrick et al asked 392 people to name their ex classmates. They were given photos and asked to recall names of people shown. Or given names and asked to match them to a photo . After 15 years they could recognise 90% of names and faces.

Encoding The way in which information is represented in the memory store. E.g. By sound, meaning or image. Sensory Memory: In original form Short-term Memory: Mainly acoustic: Conrad: Showed participants a sequence of 6 consonants on a screen. There were 2 conditions; acoustically similar or acoustically dissimilar. Participants found it harder to recall acoustically similar letters ; he concluded that we must convert visual material to acoustic code. Long-term Memory: Mainly Semantic: Baddely- Participants asked to recall lists of words that were acoustically similar, acoustically dissimilar , semantically similar and semantically dissimilar. When asked to recall the words after delay participants found it most difficult to recall the semantically similar words. Therefore they must have been using semantic coding.

Strengths Glanzer and Cunitz Milner Asked participants to recall a list of words , immediately after or after a 30 second delay when participants completed a distracter task. They found that participants in the immediate recall condition could recall more words that were positioned at the start and at the end of the list- supporting idea of primary and recency effect. Those in the second condition recalled more words at the beginning of the list due to the distraction causing information in STM to be lost. This clearly supports the MSM as the words at the beginning of the list went into the LTM and the words at the end of the list went into STM. The words in the middle of the list weren't remembered. Studied a young man called HM who was left with severe memory impairment after brain surgery. Brain damage caused by operation to remove hippocampus from both sides of his brain. His personality and intellect remained intact but could no longer form memories. This suggest that the hippocampus may function as a gateway which memories should pass before entering a permanant storage.

Multi-Store Model of Memory