Shallice and Warrington (1969)

Aim

To investigate the relationship between the long term and short term memory stores when the short term memory has been impaired

Participant

• K.F was a young man who is 28 years old that was in a motorcycle accidence when he was 17

• Sustained a left parieto-occipital fracture in that accident and was unconscious for 10 weeks

• 2 years later he started epilepsy and in 1965 was investigated

• He was totally unable to repeat letters and numbers, shows defect in his STM, his LTM remains intact

Procedure

• Researchers used triangulation, testing patient K.F. in free recall with verbal material (numbers, letters, words) presented in strings of 1, 2, 3, and 4 items.

• K.F. learned and recalled these items after a specified period.

• Additional auditory tests assessed K.F.'s verbal and auditory short-term memory capacities.

Findings

• Auditory performance on the task is related to numbers of items in each string

• KF was only able to repeat one item reliably and proportion of items decreases as the string length increases

• Memory of visual presented material > auditory presented material

Conclusion

• KF's STM was severely damaged in that its capacity is greatly reduced

• Identifying difference between auditory and visual memory capacity suggests 2 separate stores

• KF intact LTM and impaired STM contradicts the MSM theory that material in LTM has first been processed in the STM

• It does support Atkinson and Shiffrins contention that there are seperate memory stores for STM and LTM

Strengths

• Research triangulation utilised: increases reliability and validity

• Informed consent

• KF’s identity was remained anonymous

Limitations

• Ethically non-replicable (case study)

• Researchers must ensure to report unbiased information