Memory: The Multi-Store Model (1968)
The Multi-Store Model of Memory
Atkinson and Shiffrin created the multi-store model to represent how information flows through the memory system, the model suggests that memory is made up of three stores, the sensory register, short term memory and then the long term memory.
The sensory register is the memory store for each of our senses, such as haptic memory (touch) echoic memory (hearing) and iconic memory (vision) , the coding of the sensory register is acoustic, meaning it is the information is coded by sounds. The capacity of the sensory register is extremely large, it can hold millions of receptors, however the duration of the sensory register is very short, it can only last roughly half a second.
• Very little of the information that goes into your sensory memory passes into the short term or long term memory unless lots of attention is paid, which is the key to the memory system.
Short term memory is the limited capacity store, this is because it can only contain limited information, Miller (1956) suggested that memory can hold 'the magic number 7 plus or minus 2'; on average the short term memory can old 5 to 9 items.
• Maintenance rehearsal occurs when we repeat information to ourselves over and over again, this means that we can keep this information within our short term memory as long as we repeat it enough, this then passes it to your long term memory.
The long term memory is the permanent store for the information that has been repeated enough to travel from your short term memory to your long term memory. Psychologists believe that the capacity of the long term memory is unlimited and can last for years and years; although this information is stored in the long term memory, if we want to recall it, it has to be transferred back to the short term memory through retrieval. They also believe that the long term memory is coded semantically for example; Baddeley (1966) presented participants with lists of 10 words at a time, some lists were semantically similar and others were not. They were tested immediately then tested again 20 minutes later. They found that after 20 minutes participants did poorly on the semantically similar words, this suggests that we encode long term memory accorded to meaning and therefore can become confused with words that have similar meanings .
A major strength of the multi store model of memory is that it is supported by research studies confirming that the short term memory and the long term memory are significantly different, this is shown through many experiments such as Baddeley, who found that we tend to mix up words that sound similar in our short term memory but instead we mix up works with similar meaning in our long term memory, the strength of this study is that it clearly suggests that coding in the short term memory is acoustic and coding in the long term memory is semantic showing a clear difference and also supporting the multi store model.
However negatives of the multi store model includes factors such as more than one type of short term and long term memory; there is a lot of evidence showing that the long term memory, is not a unitary memory store, for example, we have one long term memory store for our memories like riding a bike but we have a different long term memory store for information such as facts. This information presents a problem for the multi store model because it is not shown, the multi store model shows one long term memory and that is it. This is the same for the short term memory, like the long term memory, the short term memory is a unitary store, there isn't only one type of short term memory store, however for medical conditions such as amnesia this cannot be true. This shows problems with the multi store model because none of this is stated and can be seen as reductionism, as it actually is quite complex nonetheless the multi store model shows it in its simplest form.
