Multi-store memory model + study

Who introduced the Multi-store memory model?

Atkinson and Shiffrin

What does the MSM argue?

Memory consists of 3 separate stores of information: Sensory store, short-term store, and long-term store. Moving between them requires certain actions (attention, transfer, retrieval, rehearsal)

What is the sensory store responsible for?

It is responsible for remembering briefly anything that we retrieve with our senses such as touch, smell, taste, sound, sight.

What is the short-term memory store responsible for?

• Has a limited capacity and duration

• Information enters from the sensory store if attention is paid to the stimuli

• If the information is rehearsed, it can be moved into long-term memory

• If it is not rehearsed, then it will disrupt the rehearsal, and the information may be displaced or lost

What is the long-term memory store responsible for?

• Where memory is stores after it has been rehearsed while in STM. LTM has unlimited capacity and duration.

What happens when we move something from the LTM to STM?

Retrieval

What happens when we move something from the STM to the LTM?

Transfer.

What happens when a piece of information stays in the STM?

Rehearsal

What happens when a piece of information moves from the sensory model to the STM?

Attention

Aim of Peterson and Peterson 1959

To investigate the duration of short-term memory.

Method of Peterson and Peterson 1959

Participants were given one random trigram to remember.

They were then asked to count backward in 3s from a random number

This was done to prevent them from rehearsing the information so it would stay in the STS and not transfer to the LTS

Then they were asked to recall the trigram.

Results of Peterson and Peterson 1959

After six seconds the ability to remember the three-letter stimuli (in the correct order) had about a 50% accuracy rate. When the time counting backward was extended to 18 seconds, there was almost zero recollection of details.

After about six seconds, accuracy was around 50%, but this dropped to almost zero after 18 seconds.