Memory
MODELS OF MEMORY
Multi-store Model
 Atkinson and Shifrin, 1968 – Memory stores are
separate and distinct
Sensory
Memory
Attention
Short Term Memory
Retrieval
Rehearsal
Long Term
Memory
Rehearsal
 Sensory memory is the memory of information
gained through the 5 senses. Most of this
information is immediately forgotten and
doesn’t make it to the STM.
Scoville and Milner, 1957
 Aim – Study the effects of brain damage on behaviour.
 Method & Procedure – Case study of HM (1953) Surgeons
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removed his hippocampus dues to severe epilepsy.
Results – Behaviour and personality remained the same
but memory was affected. 90 second memory span and no
memory of the 10 years before his operation. His semantic
& procedural memory remained.
STM intact.
Provides support for a physiological multi store model.
Hippocampus place of transfer between STM and LTM?
Do you remember Clive Wearing? He also supports the
idea for separate stores.
Evaluation
 Oversimplified – doesn't consider the different
stores for the different kinds of LTM (episodic,
procedural and semantic).
 Only proposes that information is retained via
rehearsal. There are other ways of retaining
information, Craik and Lockhart, 1972, suggested
that processing was also a factor.
 Craik and Tulvig , 1975. Ppt given a list of words
and asked questions about each (rhyme, capitals,
meaning). Ppts recalled more words which they
had processed for meaning.
Further support
 Glanzer and Cunitz, 1966 – primacy(LTM) and
recency effect (STM).
 Beardsley, 1997 – Prefrontal cortex active
during immediate memory tasks.
 Squire, et al, 1992 – hippocampus active
when LTM engaged.
Issues arising from Exit
Passes
 Baddeley, 1996 – mistakes show encoding?
 Multi store model? No specific questions
 Encoding process? No specific questions
 Jacobs, 1887? NSQ
 Hippocampus
Working Memory Model of
Memory
 Baddeley and Hitch, 1974.
 Focuses on STM (working memory)
 Believes that STM is a number of different
stores.
The Model
http://www.simplypsychology.org/working%20memory.html
Acts like attention and
focuses appropriate
‘slave system’
Has a limited capacity
1.Phonological
Store
2.Articulatory
Process
Slave Systems
Added by
Baddeley in
2000
Baddeley and Hitch 1976
 Can different components of the working memory work
at the same time?
 Participants (12 students) given 2 tasks to do at the
same time:
 A verbal reasoning task + no task (control condition)
 Verbal reasoning + repetition of single word (requires the
control executive to be working on 2 tasks)
 Verbal reasoning + recalling a 6 digit number (requires the
central executive to be working on 2 more complex tasks)
 The more complex the task became the longer it took
participants to complete the task.
 However, that participants didn’t make any mistakes in
the tasks - providing support for the working memory
model. (That there is more than one component to
STM).
Evaluation – Advantages
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Active process: It sees memory as an active process and not merely a passive store.
This is in keeping with more modern views of memory that don’t see it as a ‘thing’ but a
function or process.
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Rehearsal: It only considers rehearsal to be important in the phonological loop. It is
widely considered that the multi-store model does place too great an emphasis on
rehearsal in transferring information to STM.
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PET scans (Positron Emission Tomography), show that different parts of the brain are
active when different parts of the system are in use. This provides further evidence for
distinct components. The central executive seems to reside in the frontal cortex and
the scratch pad in the right side of the occipital lobe, known to be associated with
vision.
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Amnesiac case studies: A single component STM is unable to explain the case of KF,
who, following a motorbike accident suffered impairment of his STM. Shallice &
Warrington (1974) showed that although his memory for verbal material was poor his
memory for visual information was unaffected. In terms of the working memory model
this can be explained by damage to the articulatory loop but with the sketchpad
remaining intact.
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Baddeley (1986) found that patients with damage to their frontal lobe had problems
concentrating suggesting damage to the central executive.
Evaluation - Disadvantages
 Very little is known about the central executive.
Elsinger & Domasio (1985) studied a man who suffered
trauma following the removal of a brain tumour.
Although his IQ was still high and he could cope well
with interference during memory tasks he was quite
unable to make decisions. The fact that some functions
associated with the CE were intact whereas others were
impaired provides evidence for the CE being a collection
of separate components.
 Baddeley (2001) added the episodic buffer making the
model more complex. This suggests again that the
model is not complete and may need still further
revision as more evidence is uncovered.