To What Extent Does The Multi Store Model Offer A

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To What Extent Does the Multi Store Model Offer A Reasonable Account of Human Memory? The Multi Store Model was created by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968). It states that there are three segments to memory: Sensory Memory, Short Term Memory and Long Term Memory. Sensory Memory receives information from all five senses, but only stores this information for a very brief period of time (a matter of milliseconds). If attention is paid to the information, it is transferred to the Short Term Memory, which according to Miller (1977) can store about seven items/chunks. However, the Short Term Memory can only store information for a few seconds, so for information to be stored longer it needs to be transferred to the Long Term Memory. For this to happen the information has to be rehearsed. When information is recalled out of the Long Term Memory into the Short Term Memory it is called retrieval; this explains how we are able to recall information from a prolonged period of time since recall was asked ( at least 50 years according too the study by Bahrick et al. 1975) The strengths of the Multi Store Model are that it has a large amount of supporting evidence. The case study of Clive Wearing supports the idea that for information to be stored in the Long Term Memory it must move through the Short Term Memory. This is because Clive Wearing’s hippocampus was damaged by an infection, resulting in his loss of ability to transfer information. Another piece of supporting evidence was a study by Glanzer and Cunitz (1966). They gave participants a list of twenty words to learn, and discovered that they tended to remember the first few and the last few, but not the words in the middle. This is because of the primacy effect, where information has been rehearsed and transferred into the Long Term Memory, and the recency effect, where

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