The Multi-Store Model

Atkinson and Shiffrin, said there were 3 main stores - sensory, STM and LTM.

Most of the data entering the sensory store is ignored, but if attention is paid, it moves into the STM. This data can then be either lost through displacement (due to limited capacity of STM ), or moved into the LTM via rehearsal.

Atkinson and Shiffrin made a direct link between rehearsal in STM and strength of memory in LTM.

1. Murdock - Serial position effect. This said that no matter how many words a person is asked to recall, words at the beginning of the list (primacy effect) will be recalled as they have been rehearsed and placed int the LTM, words in the middle of the list will have been displaced (due to limited capacity of STM), by words at the end of the list (recency effect) which are still in the STM at the time of recall. This shows that they are separate stores which work independently from one-another.

REMEMBER: Beginning primacy rehearsal LTM, middle displacement, end recency STM.

2. KF - suffered severe brain damage, which resulted in loss of his auditory memory (2 on digit span technique), whilst his visual and LTM remained intact. Shows LTM and STM are separate stores, otherwise they would all be damaged.

1. Cohen and Squire used brain scanning techniques to find there are different types of LTM. They found there was procedural memory (for skills), declaritive memory (for facts) and episodic memory (for experiences). Clive Wearing is evidence for this - he suffered loss of his declaritive and episodic memory, whilst his procedural memory remained intact.

2. KF - suffered severe brain damage, resulting in the loss of his auditory memory (2 on digit span technique), whilst his visual and LTM remained intact. Shows that STM is not a unitary store, as the MSM says.