The Multi-Store Model was developed by Atkinson and Shiffrin and is made up of three, separate, unitary stores: the sensory memory (SM), the short term memory (STM) and the long term memory (LTM). The MSM believes that information flows in a fixed, linear order. Information enters the SM through the 5 sense and the SM is very limited and if information is not attended to, then it will decay very rapidly. If attended to, information will be encoded acoustically into the STM and according to Peterson and Peterson, duration can last up to 20 seconds. According to Miller's theory, the capacity of the STM is 7+/-2 chunks of information. For information to stay in the STM, maintenance rehearsal must occur and for this information to be passed on to the LTM, it must be elaborately rehearsed. Information is process semantically in the LTM, according to Baddeley, and can remain there for potentially up to a life time. Information can be retrieved from the LTM, to the STM at any time, however it can also be forgotten due to decay or displacement.
So, this is the model outline for the Multi-Store Model of memory, I have just memorised it, try and learn it if you haven't already.
As for evaluation, talk about:
- The pre-frontal cortex lighting up during PET scans and fMRI scans when STM tasks took place.
- The hippocampus lighting up during PET scans and fMRI scans when LTM tasks took place.
- KF: had a motorcycle accident, affected his ability to recall verbal information, not visual - this contradicts the MSM, because KF suggests that the model should be unitary.
- You could then go on to say that case studies are not always reliable because they do not take into account individual differences and are therefore not generalisable, thus; lack population validity.
I'm bricking it for the exam, but let's just hope for the best - good luck to all!