AQA A Psychology

EVIDENCE FOR 3 SEPERATE MEMORY STORES IN MSM

Sensory store- Sperling showed grid of digits. All items- 5 recalled 42%. One row- 3 items 75%

Serial position- Glanzer and Cunitz primary and recency effect. Primary affects LTM and recency effects STM.

Areas of brain- Beardsley showed prefrontal cortex related to STM. Squire et al showed hippocampus related to LTM

Case studies- HM removed hippocampus. Maintained IQ and personality but could not form new long term memories. Suggests hippocampus may act as gateway.

STRENGTHS OF MUTLI STORE MODEL

Strong evidence for 3 different stores- suggest basis of MSM is sound.

Provides account of memory in terms of structure and process- Structures are 3 stores and process is rehearsal and attention.

Act as catalyst for research- psychologists want to test it and by doing so discover new things.

WEAKNESSES OF MULTI STORE MODEL

Oversimplifies structure and processes

STM and LTM are not unitary- KF Case- had brain damage which caused difficulty dealing with verbal info in STM but normal ability to process visual info. Suggests STM not single store.

Schachter- Suggested 4 different LTM stores. Semantic, Episodic, Procedural and Perceptual representation system. Spiers studied amnesia patients, in all cases procedural memory and PRS intact but not the other 2. Shows LTM not unitary.

Rehersal versus processing

Craik and Lockhart- suggested enduring memories made by processing rather than just maintennance rehearsal. Asked question from 3 conditions. 1.Shallow 2. Phonemic 3. Semantic. Participants remembered most words from condition 3.

How seperate are STM and LTM

Logie- said that STM relies on LTM therefore STM cannot come first. Show when you have to chunk string of letters together as you have to use LTM to recall meaningful groups of letters eg AQABBCITV

Ruchkin et al- demonstarted Logie's point by monitoring brain activity. He gave patricipants words and pseudo words. Brain activity should be same in STM but there was more activity for real words indicating involvement of other areas of the brain. He concluded that STM is actually just the part of LTM which is activated at any given time.

EVIDENCE SUPPORTING WORKING MEMORY MODEL

2 tasks at once using same component- Hitch and Baddeley- gave 2 tasks…