Multi Store Model

Multi Store Model

1. Sensory Registar

   • Senses - sight, touch, hearing, taste and smell.
   • Buffer for all the information from the environment.
   • Duration - 0.5 seconds (it becomes lost if not attended to.)

2. STM

   • Duration: 15-30 seconds.
   • Decays unless it is transferred to LTM through rehearsal.
   • 5-7 items (7+/-2)
   • Encoding - Acoustic
   • Chunking - Group together.
   • Peterson & Peterson (1956) - Presented particpants with non-sense trigams.

3. LTM

   • Duartion - Lifetime
   • Capacity - infinite.
   • Encoding - Semantic.
   • Decays if we don't revisit it
   • Bahricket al (1975) - Sample was 17-74 yr olds. Had recall tasks - Recall names and pictures. 90% accurate for faces after 34 yr olds. 48 yr olds decline.
   • Bradely et al (2008) - Shown 2500 objects over 5.5 hours. Shown pairs and then had to identify which one from the original set (92% = different/88% = similar.)

4. Evaluation

   • SS - Clive Wearing: Has retrograde amnesia and is now unable to form new LTM's. It provides evidence of separate stores as he seems unable to form new LTM'S.
   • C&C - Research support lacks ecological validity (Glanzer & Cunitz): Carried out in artificial and controlled lab conditions & uses word list. Does not reflect memory in real life and its complexity.
   • SS - Glanzer & Cunitz (1966) - Found that ppts recalled more words from the start (primacy effect) and the end of a word list (recency effect.) Primacy effect can be explained as words from the list are likely to be passed into LTM as they have been rehearsed. Opposed words at the end would still be in rehearsal loop or STM. Words in middle can become displaced as it can only hold 5-7 items.)
   • Application - Model emphasises the importance of rehearsal in forming LTM's and highlights how important it is to revist old memories so they don't decay. The advice to students would be to rehearse notes and revisit them frequently so they stick and don't decay.
   • CC - Research support is objective and reliable.