The first section is the sensory memory. Information is detected by the sense organs (sight and hearing). Information can be picked up by sight which is called iconic store, and information picked up from sound is called echoic store. Sensory memories only last just long enough for them to be transferred into the short term memory. The duration of this section is ¼ to ½ a second.
The experiment produces the primary effect, where many words are recalled from the beginning of the list, and the recency effect, where many words are also recalled from the end of the list, but not so many from the middle. This study also shows that there are separate short term and long term memory stores since the primary effect occurs because the words at the beginning of the list have been rehearsed, and so are transferred into the long term memory store. However, whilst this is going on, less attention is paid to the middle words and they tend to be lost unless they have some special significance to the individual. The words at the end of the list are well recalled because they are still fresh in the memory system unless there is a distractor task which causes this information to be lost through interference, displacement, or decay. This evidence can be seen as reliable since it was scientific, conducted in a laboratory, and produced quantative data that makes it easy to summarise and compare with other data.
This stores acoustically coded information for a limited duration and has a limited capacity of two seconds. The other slave system is the visuospatial scratchpad which is also known as ‘the inner eye’. This processes visual and spatial information which can be subdivided into visual cache and the inner scribe. The visuospatial scratchpad has a limited capacity. The fourth component is the episodic buffer which holds visual and acoustic information from other components.
The superior recall of items at the start of the list is called the primary effect, whilst the superior recall of the items at the end of the list is called the recency effect. This is good evidence for the multi-store model of memory because it shows the difference between the STM and the LTM. Rundus & Atkinson (1970) Rundus and Atkinson asked participants to rehearse out loud the list they were given (similar to Murdock's experiment). Tape recordings showed that words from the beginning of the list were more likely to be rehearsed than later ones. Because of the limited capacity of the STM, words from the middle of the list are thought to be lost completely or unavailable for recall.
What are the characteristics of primary memory? Basically the Primary memory is what is more often called short-term memory. Primary memory is the area of the brain where the information we have gathers is temporarily processed as given coding that human minds can understand, manipulated, and sorted into items that will be forgotten or passed on to secondary memory. The Primary Memory is only able to hold between 5 and 9 units depending on the type of item being processed and individual unique mind and abilities. Willingham states that primary memory is limited to 2 seconds of acoustic code and four visuospatial objects.
Short term memory (STM) is considered as incoming information from the sense which we attend to for only a short period of time. Only when we attend to the incoming sensory information and rehearse it does that information transfer from short term memory to long term memory. Short term memory is thought to be limited to 18-30 seconds, information that is not processed into long term memory is then lost through decay or displacement. The three main areas to memory are encoding, which is the way information is changed so it can be stored in memory. The information enters the brain via the senses including eyes and ears, it is then stored in various forms such as visual codes (pictures), acoustic form (sound based) or semantic form (how we attach meaning or experiences) Encoding
Miller also found that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters- we chunk things together and can remember more. The capacity of LTM is not scientifically possible to measure. One key difference between the concepts of STM and LTM is duration. Duration refers to how long a memory lasts before it is no longer available. Peterson and Peterson conducted a landmark study of the duration of the STM.
When the participants were asked to record the number of words they could remember from a list of 20 words it was found that the participants tended to remember the words that were at the beginning of the list because the words are rehearsed and therefore they are transferred into the LTM. Also the participants tended to remember the words from the end of the list because the words are still in the STM when they are recalled. However the words that were in the middle of the list were not likely to be recalled as much as the words that were located at the end of the list and the beginning. This is because the words would not have been rehearsed and they would be displaced from the STM when
Encoding factors change as people age, and this is evident in depth of processing and performance under speeded tasks also change as we age. The older people get, the more difficulty one has categorizing spontaneously. An example task would be chunking. Since short-term memory is the ability to hold information that is just retrieved for a couple of seconds, and the digit-span task is just one way to measure short-term memory. “In the digit-span task, an examiner reads a serious of randomly arranged digits at a rate of about one per second, and at the end of the list the person must repeat them back in exact order” (Bjorklund, 2011, p.110).
It helps the transfer of information from short term memory into long term memory. (Willingham, 2007) The brain also helps with problem solving and reasoning skills. In order for cognitive functioning in the brain to work correctly it needs to be able to transmit signals from the left hemisphere to the right hemisphere. When signals are received from the left side of the body they go to the right side of the brain and visa versa. The brain also helps coordinate movement.