Multi-Store

Model
One popular theory of how we remember memory
was put forward by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1969).
It proposed that the human memory is divided
into 3 main sections:
 Processes

• Attention: Is needed to transfer information from SM to

STM. Most stimuli that reach the senses are ignored
because they aren’t seen as important. Only relevant or
interesting information or material that we choose to
concentrate on is passed to the STM.

• Rehearsal: Is needed to transfer information from STM

to LTM. We can rehearse information out loud as a child
would do learning times tables by rote, or we can
rehearse sub-vocally, in our heads. Either way it is seen
as crucial and is one of the main criticisms of the theory.
 Sensory Memory (SM)

Information from around us such as visual images

from the eyes, sound, smell, etc enters the memory
system. The information that enters may only stay in
sensory memory until it 'decays' and is forgotten. But
if we pay particular attention to a piece of information
e.g. focusing on an object or listening to somebody
speak, that information will be passed into the second
'part' of our memory which is short-term memory.
The key characteristics of this store are that it has a
large capacity, but very short duration no more than 2
seconds. An experiment was done by Sperling (1960)
on iconic memory.
 Sperling (1960)

Aim: To investigate the capacity and duration of the sensory store.

Procedures: Four or fewer letters were represented to the participants for 50
milliseconds. Participants were found to be able to nearly recall all four, despite
the variations in presentation e.g. two small rows instead of one large one.
Even if the array had lots of items in it subjects still recalled about four of them.
Even if the exposure time had been increased to 5/10ths of a second only four
were recalled. Sperling moved from the whole-report technique to the partial-
report technique. Three rows of four letters presented, but the participants
knew which line to recall by a musical tone. Participants saw the rows for
50msecsm, after another 50msecs they heard a musical tone, form which they
then had to recall the row indicated.
Findings: Participants were excellent at recalling all four items in the row, as they
had no idea which rows were to be asked about. It seems that sensory register
has relatively a large capacity, but just a short duration span less than
300msecs.
Conclusion: It is unclear how much the sensory store can hold, but it seems to
have duration of 250 - 300mesecs which makes it difficult to recall more than
four items. It also seems to be a visual store.
Criticisms:
• In some experiments (Merikle, 1980) iconic memory is not pre-categorical.
• The types of errors the subjects make.
• Stimulus persistence is different from information persistence.
 Averbach & Coriel (1961) – carried out 2 experiments

Aim: To investigate capacity of iconic memory.

Procedures: Participants were shown 2 rows of 8 random letters for 50 milliseconds; a
small mark appeared over one of the letter positions the participants had to say
which letter had been in that position.
Findings: Letter identification 75% was correct.
Conclusion: only 12 letters can be held in iconic memory (i.e. 75% of the 16 letters
shown).
Criticisms:
• First, performance does not decrease to the point at which the target letter is
never identified correctly.
• Second, Averbach and Coriel note that it takes time to interpret the marker. If the
icon decays during the time that the marker is being interpreted, then the point at
which the performance function plateaus is likely to underestimate the duration of
iconic memory.
Aim: To investigate duration of sensory memory.
Procedures: Participants were shown a letter, then after a short time interval shown
another letter.
Findings: If the time interval was less than a 100 milliseconds superimposition occurred
e.g. “F” then “L” becomes “E.” If time interval was more than 100 milliseconds
displacement occurred e.g. “F” then “L” becomes “L.”
Conclusion: Iconic store lasts approximately for 100 milliseconds also iconic store is
forgotten by displacement.
Criticisms:
• No guarantee that their approach gives us the true duration of a sensory memory
store.
• The duration of iconic memory was inferred indirectly by combining the data from
several experiments.
 Short-term Memory (STM)

Information from the sensory memory (SM) is passed

onto short-term memory. Short-term memory (STM)
and long-term memory (LTM) have different capacity,
duration and coding. Duration in STM is up to 30
seconds, it has a capacity of 7+/- 2 items/chunks and
it encodes acoustically. Miller (1956) put forward that
memory in STM is in 7+/- 2 chunks of information but
he did not specify how much information can be held
in each slot. Peterson and Peterson(1959) did a study
on STM to see whether interference effects recall.
Waugh and Norman (1965) also did a study on decay
and displacement in STM which causes information to
disappear from STM before it is passed onto LTM.
 Peterson and Peterson (1959)

Aim: to investigate the duration of the STM.

Procedures: Asked participants to recall trigrams, to prevent rehearsal participants
were asked to count backwards in 3’s in specified order out loud for 3, 6, 9,12,15,18
seconds after presentation.
Findings: The percentage recall was after 3 seconds = 80%, after 6 seconds = 50%,
after 18 seconds = less than 10%. Recall decreases steadily between 3 and 18
seconds suggesting that the duration of the STM is not much more than 18 seconds.
Conclusion: The memory trace in the STM has just about disappeared after 18 seconds.
Information held in the STM is quickly lost without rehearsal.
Criticisms:
• This study lacks mundane realism as the recall of trigrams is not likely to occur in
everyday situations, therefore the results cannot be generalised.
• The trigrams are not meaningful; evidence from other studies suggests that
meaningful information is more likely to be recalled.
• The case study of "HM" contradicts these findings as he could only successfully use
his STM (as his LTM was damaged) yet he could recall new memories for up to 15
Minutes before they decayed.
• The experiment was strictly controlled; therefore cause can be separated from effect.
Therefore it can be said that time delay does cause recall to decline.
• The findings of the Peterson and Peterson study depended in part on the fact that
the participants were given many trials with different trigrams and may have become
confused.
 Waugh and Norman (1965)
Aim: To investigate whether counting backwards interferes with the recall of short-term
memory (STM).
Procedures: Participants were presented with a list of 16 digits, participants task was to
remember the prior presentation of the last digit and to recall the digit that followed
it in the list earlier. They used two rates of presentation slow (1 digit per second)
and fast (4 digits per second).
Findings: There was a slightly higher recall with fast than slow presentation when the
probe was near the beginning of the list. Recall dropped sharply as the probe was
moved from the end to the beginning of the list.
Conclusion: As time passes, what mainly caused forgetting from STM is exposure to
additional information, not the passage of time.
Criticisms:
• Lack of mundane realism.
• Lacks ecological validity.
• Findings cannot be generalised.
 Long-term Memory (LTM)

Long-term memory (LTM) can last up to a whole lifetime; it has

an unlimited storage of memory, it encodes semantically and has
a very long duration. It differs structurally and functionally from
short-term memory (STM), which stores items for only around 30
seconds.Biologically, STM can become LTM through the process of
rehearsal and meaningfulassociation. Much is not known about the
underlying biological mechanisms of LTM, which involves a
physical change in the structure of neurons, has been proposed as
the mechanism by which short-term memories move into long-
term storage. As long-term memory is subject to fading in the
natural forgetting process, several recalls/retrievals of memory
may be needed for long-term memories to last for years,
dependent also on the depth of processing. LTM is also known as
very long-term memory (VLTM) because memory can be
remembered for a very long period of time. A study done by
Bahrick et al. (1975) on VLTM.
 Bahrick et al. (1975)

Aim: To investigate the existence of very long-term memory (VLTM), and to see whether there was any
difference between recognition and recall.
Procedures: An opportunity sample of 392 ex-high-school students aged from 17 – 74 years was
formed. They were split in two groups were for each photo, participants were given a group of
names and asked to select the name that matched the person in the photo (recognition group).
Another group of participants was simply asked to name the people in the photo without being
given a list of possible names (recall group).
Findings: They found 90% accuracy in the recognition group, even with those who had left 34 years
previously. After 48 years it declined to 80% for the name recognition and 40% for face
recognition. Recall group was less accurate it was only 60% accurate after 15 years and only 30%
after 48 years.
Conclusion: The finding shows that classmates are rarely forgotten once recognition cues have been
given. Therefore, Bahrick et al.’s aim to show that people have VLTM was supported. It also
supported the claim that recognition is better than recall. But it cannot be concluded that VLTM
exists for all types of information. However, the finding that free recall was only 30% after 48 years
indicated that many of the memories were fairly weak.
Criticisms:
• Unlike many memory experiments, this study used meaningful stimulus material (high-school
yearbooks) and tested people for memories from their own lives.
• It is unclear whether the drop-off in accuracy after 48 years reflects the limits of duration or a more
general decline in memory with age.
• High external validity due to the research being representative of natural behaviour.
 Strengths and Limitations of the Model
Strengths:
• Evidence from brain damaged patients supports the distinction between STM and LTM. Some
patients have problems with STM but not LTM, and some may have problems with LTM but not
STM. This shows the distinction between the two memory stores.
• There is evidence that encoding is different in both memory stores. In STM memory is encoded
acoustically, and in LTM memory is encoded semantically.
• There is evidence that the capacity of both memory stores is different in STM and LTM. In STM only
7+/- 2 chunks/items can be stored. Whereas, in LTM the capacity is unlimited.
• There are huge differences in the duration of information in both memory stores. Duration in STM
lasts up to 30 seconds and in LTM can last up to a whole life time.
Limitations:
• The model argues that the transfer of information from STM to LTM is through rehearsal. However,
in daily life most people do not spend time rehearsing, although they are constantly storing
information in LTM.
• It is assumed that information in STM is encoded acoustically and in LTM it is encoded semantically.
But there is no explanation of how information is passed onto LTM if both encode differently.
• The model is oversimplified in its assumption that there is only one single long-term store. There
are many different types of long-term stores: episodic memory; semantic memory; declarative
knowledge; and procedural knowledge.
• Also the model is oversimplified in its assumption that there is a single short-term store. There is
evidence from brain damaged patients suggesting that there are a number of different short-term
stores.