Miller (1956)

aim

to investigate the capacity of short term memory

methods

participants were tested with lists of words to determine how many they can remember. Once shown the list they were asked to recall as many as possible right after the learning phase.

results

seven plus or minus two words were best remembered by the majority of participants.

conclusion

this showed that our short term memory is limited in capacity

Multi-store model (1968)

According to the multi-store model of memory (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968) memory can be explained in terms of 3 stores (sensory store, short term store and long term store) and 2 processes (attention and rehearsal).

Information first enters the sensory store (also known as sensory memory) directly from the senses. It remains in the sensory store for a maximum duration of around 2 seconds before it decays and is replaced with new information. If information in the sensory store is attended to then it can be passed to the short term store.

Around 7 plus or minus 2 chunks of Information (Miller, 1956) can be stored in the short term store (also know as short term memory). It is encoded primarily in a phonological format (by its sound) and remains there for around 12-30 seconds without being rehearsed. Where the information is rehearsed it can remain there for as long as it is being rehearsed, but it will stop any new information entering the store. Transfer from the short term store to the long term store is achieved by a process called elaborative rehearsal. New information that enters the short term store displaces (pushes out) any information that is already there, meaning that information that is not rehearsed and passed to the long term store is forgotten.

When information enters the long term store (also know as long term memory) it remains there for up to a life time (Bahrick et al, 1975). The capacity of the store is potentially unlimited, and encoding is primarily in a semantic format (information is stored by its meaning).

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