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Multi-Store Model, Evaluation, Evidence - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Experiments conducted by Miller (1956) indicate the capacity of STM is 7 items or chunks plus or minus 2 (5-9 items)
      - Miller demonstrated this in an experiment where he asked participants to recall information, adding an extra bit as he moved on: A bit like the game ‘I went to the shops’
      - Starting participants with two or three words to recall, he gradually built it up until they made an error
      - It was found that most participants struggled with between 5-9 words
      - This is known as ‘Miller’s Magic 7’
  - - - Duration relates to how long a memory can be stored for
      - As short-term memory (STM) is only a temporary device, then this is limited
      - The duration of short-term memory is around 18-30s
  - - - Encoding is how the information is processed from the senses into the memory itself
      - This is how the information will be stored and ultimately recalled
      - Encoding is always in the form of a modality or one of the senses
      - Short-term memory encodes acoustically or using sound
- - - - Gustatory memory: retaining information that comes from taste
      - Olfactory memory: retaining information that comes from smell
      - Haptic memory: retaining information that comes from touch
      - Echoic memory: retaining information that comes from sound or auditory stimulus
      - Iconic memory: retaining information that comes from sight or light stimulus
- - - - There are three types of long-term memory (LTM):
      - Episodic
      - Procedural
      - Semantic
    - - This is the part of LTM that relates to experiences a person has had or events from their life.
      - Examples of episodic memory:
      - A 16th birthday party
      - The first time someone sees the sea
      - Someone's first psychology lesson
    - - This is the part of LTM involved in knowing how to do certain actions or skills
      - Examples of procedural memory:
      - Knowing how to ride a bicycle
      - Knowing how to swim
      - Knowing how to make a cup of tea
    - - This is the part of LTM that involves knowing and recalling facts, concepts and meanings
      - Examples of semantic memory:
      - Knowing that Paris is the capital of France
      - Knowing that the number 3 is between the numbers 2 and 4
      - Knowing that the word 'bank' has two meanings: A place where money is stored, or the edge of a river
    - - Long Term Memory (LTM) is the part of the memory that holds information indefinitely, having a longer duration and larger capacity than Short Term Memory (STM)
      - As far as is known, long-term memory has an unlimited capacity
      - There is no way to test this as people often forget facts and information
      - There has never been a known case of someone not being able to learn something new or retain a memory because their LTM is full
      - Research from studies as well as anecdotal evidence suggests people can recall facts from childhood in their later life
      - The duration of LTM is as long as a person’s lifetime
      - The only time in a person’s life that may not be open for the recall is an early childhood
      - Most people cannot recall episodes from their life before the age of two
      - This known as Childhood or Infantile amnesia
    - - Encoding is how the information is processed from the senses into the memory itself
      - This is how the information will be stored and ultimately recalled
      - Encoding is always in the form of a modality or one of the senses
      - Long-term memory encodes semantically or by meaning
      - We know this from a study by Baddeley (1966)
- - - - Jacobs (1887) had completed a similar experiment using digits with 443 female students
      - He called this a digit span experiment, using numbers instead of words
      - His results were similar to Miller's, with 7.3 being the average recall
      - This supports Miller and suggests his study is valid
      - Miller’s study is also reliable as it is easy to copy and it is especially reliable as the results are more often than not the same
      - As it is a lab study extraneous variables would have been controlled
      - However, it could be argued it lacks ecological validity as the task bears little resemblance to real life
  - - - Peterson and Peterson conducted a well-controlled study and many extraneous variables would have been removed or controlled for
      - But does it prove decay?
      - Could it be that previous trigrams, maybe similar to the one being recalled, interfered with the memory and that is why the participant made the mistake?
      - This challenges the validity of the study
  - - - Once again, this is a lab experiment so is highly controlled, with extraneous variables taken care of
      - However, this also means that it lacks ecological validity as the tasks do not relate to real life
      - The words had little to no meaning for participants and so they were harder to recall
      - Information we have to recall in reality often has meaning and significance so making recall easier
- - - - However, this also means that it lacks ecological validity as the tasks do not relate to real life
      - The words had little to no meaning for participants and so they were harder to recall
      - Information that has to be recalled in reality often has meaning and significance, making recall easier
      - Exam Tip
      - Once again, this is a lab experiment so is highly controlled, with extraneous variables taken care of
- - - - The main study into duration and STM comes from Peterson and Peterson (1959)
      - They gave participants non-sensical three-letter trigrams to learn eg. CGR or BHT
      - These were presented visually to the participants, one at a time
      - The participants had to recall the trigram in the correct order after a delay of either 3s, 6s, 9s, 12s, 15s or 18s
      - During this delay they were asked to complete a distraction task: usually counting backward from 300 in 3s (300, 297,294 etc.)
      - This was to prevent them from rehearsing during the delay
      - A graph of the correctly recalled trigrams over time was plotted and was shown to be a decay curve
      - This demonstrates that over time the memory seems to decay
      - The graph was extrapolated to show that after the 30s recall in STM would be zero
      - Therefore, Peterson and Peterson stated that the duration of STM was 18-30s
  - - - We know this from a study by Baddeley (1966)
      - Baddeley considered encoding in short-term memory and long-term memory but here we will look at STM only
      - He gave participants four lists of words to learn:
      - Acoustically similar: words that sounded the same such as cat, bat, rat
      - Acoustically dissimilar: words that did not sound the same such as laugh, bear, pencil
      - Semantically similar: words that mean the same such as large, huge, enormous
      - Semantically dissimilar: words that do not mean the same such as police, computer, chair
      - The words were all presented visually, on a screen as part of a slideshow
      - They had to be recalled in the order presented: Free recall was not allowed
      - For the short-term part of the experiment, he asked for a recall immediately
      - He found the acoustically similar words had the worst recall
      - There was no difference in STM for the semantically similar and dissimilar words
      - From this, he concluded that STM relied on acoustic encoding to process information
- - - - He gave participants four lists of words to learn:
        
        Acoustically dissimilar: words that did not sound the same such as laugh, bear, pencil
        
        Semantically similar: words that mean the same such as large, huge, enormous
        
        Semantically dissimilar: words that do not mean the same such as police, computer, chair
        
        Acoustically similar: words that sounded the same such as cat, bat, rat
      - The words were all presented visually, on a screen as part of a slideshow
      - They had to be recalled in the order presented: Free recall was not allowed
      - For the long-term memory part of the experiment he asked for recall after 20 minutes
      - He found the semantically similar words had the worst recall: Getting them in the correct order was incredibly difficult as they all meant the same thing
      - There was no difference in LTM for the acoustically similar and dissimilar words
      - From this, he concluded that LTM relied on semantic encoding to process information