How Your Memory Works — The First Model of Memory
Let’s discuss.
Memory is a complex cognitive process; it explains why we remember some details of a situation, and not others, why we can recall things from who knows how many years ago, and more. When we percieve information, we learn and store that information, so that it can be recalled later. Memory is a covert process, meaning that it is not something than can be observed directly. For this reason, psychologists have come up with multiple models of memory over time, out which I will be discussing one of the first models of memory, the Multistore Memory Model.
This model was introduced by Atkinson and Shiffrin back in 1968, and posits that memory is made up of three different stores: the sensory register, which recieves an oncoming stimulus, the short term memory, which attends to and rehearses it,and the long term memory, which stores rehearsed information.
Now you may be thinking: rehearsed? attended? What does that mean? When pay attention to, that is, focus on a piece of information/ stimulus you recieve you are attending to it, and when you give that piece of information meaning, or associate it with something else in your memory, all the while, going through it in your head, you are rehearsing it. Rehearsal is the main process by which information from the short term memory is transfered to the long term memory. However, it is important to keep in mind that each memory store has a separate duration for which it can store information in that store, and according to that duration, unattended and unrehearsed information is lost.
The model provides a basis upon which researchers can expand upon the structure and processes of the short-term memory, and have been supproetd by extensive research on the basis of the separation of th eshort-term memory and the long-term memory, as well as case studies on amnesiacs.
However, it has been criticzed as being very oversimplified; since there are many different types of memory, such as iconic (visual) and echoic (auditory) memory, it is unlikely that all of these types of knowedge will be stored in one overarching long-term memory. That’s like opening your closet after 3 months and thinking, ‘Man, I could have organized this better.’
Not only that, the multi-store memory model focuses more on the structure of memory rather than the processes that may be happening; in this way, it can be seen that the process of rehearsal is also very simplistically explained, and the model does not explain how we can remember things we never rehearsed (such as traumatic experiences or things we deliberately want to forget), or how memories may become distorted.
One study that supports this model is Glanzer and Cunitz(1966)’s famous study on the serial position effect, i.e. the phenomenon that occurs when one is able to remeber the first and last items on a list better than those in the middle. This phenomenon was what the study aimed to demonstrate, and was conducted with 240 army-enlisted men.
The study was conducted in two parts. The first stage of the experiment involved hearing lists of 20 one-syllable nouns, after which each participants were given a free-recall task for 2 minutes, where they could recall the words in any order. In the second part of the experiment, a gap was introduced between the end of the lists and the start of the recall using a filler task for 12 minutes to prevent rehearsal. This involved counting backwards from a certain number at given intervals.
The mean number of words recalled correctly was calculated for each participant, and the results showed that participants, on average, were able to recall words from the beginning of the lists (primacy effect) better than those at the end of the lists (recency effect) in the first aprt of the experiment. However, when the gap was introduced, the primacy effect remained, while the recency effect disappeared. The researchers interpreted theses results, explaining that when people hear a list of words with the intention to memorize them, they tend to repeat the words over and over in their heads (rehearsal), and the words at the start of the list get rehearsed mmore than those following them, and therefore get transferred from the short-term memory to the long-term memory.
This experiment was significant in supporting the idea that the long-term memory and the short-term memory are separate stores, as shown by the diapearance of the recency effect. However, the experiment was restricted to army-enlisted men, which limits how much the results can be generlalized to different occupations, genders, and cultures. In addition, it is unlikely that such a situation/ task will appear in our daily lives, so the results of this experiment cannot be applied beyond this situation either.
Overall, the Multi-store Memory Model has laid a strong foundation for further research on memory, since it was the first model to distinguish between the short-term and the long-term memory stores. It has also been a contributing factor to the development of more detailed theories later on.
