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Unlock This CourseImagine your brain as a filing system with different compartments for storing information. The Multistore Model, created by Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin in 1968, explains how our memory works using this exact idea. It's one of the most famous theories in psychology and helps us understand why we remember some things but forget others.
This model suggests that memory isn't just one big storage unit, but actually three separate stores that work together like a team. Think of it like a factory production line - information comes in, gets processed and either gets stored permanently or gets thrown away.
Key Definitions:
The Multistore Model identifies three distinct memory stores, each with its own job. The sensory register catches everything around us, short-term memory holds information temporarily and long-term memory stores things permanently. It's like having three different sized boxes - a huge one that empties quickly, a small one for temporary storage and an enormous one for keeping things forever.
The sensory register is like a massive sieve that catches everything your senses pick up. Every sound, sight, smell, taste and touch gets registered here, but only for a split second. Most of this information disappears immediately because we simply can't pay attention to everything at once.
Think about walking through a busy shopping centre. Your sensory register is picking up hundreds of pieces of information every second - conversations, music, footsteps, bright lights, shop displays and smells from the food court. But you're only consciously aware of a tiny fraction of this information.
Holds visual information for about 0.5 seconds. This is why you can still "see" a camera flash even after it's gone.
Holds sound information for about 2-3 seconds. This lets you ask "What did you say?" and then remember before they repeat it.
Touch, taste and smell also have brief sensory stores, though these are less well understood by researchers.
Ever noticed how you can suddenly hear your name mentioned in a crowded room, even when you weren't listening to that conversation? This demonstrates how our sensory register constantly monitors information and attention can quickly shift to important stimuli. Your brain was processing multiple conversations simultaneously, but only brought your name to conscious awareness when it detected something personally relevant.
Short-term memory is like your mental workspace - it's where you consciously think about and work with information. Unlike the sensory register, STM can hold information for longer, but it has strict limits on both how much it can hold and how long it lasts.
Psychologist George Miller discovered that most people can hold about 7 (plus or minus 2) pieces of information in their short-term memory at once. This is why phone numbers are typically 7 digits long and why you might struggle to remember a shopping list if it has more than 7 items.
Information in short-term memory lasts about 15-30 seconds without rehearsal. Try remembering a phone number someone just told you - if you don't repeat it to yourself, you'll probably forget it within half a minute. This is why we often repeat important information like addresses or phone numbers.
Long-term memory is like a vast library that can store unlimited amounts of information for potentially your entire lifetime. Once information makes it here, it can be retrieved years or even decades later. This is where you store everything from your childhood memories to the skills you've learned.
The key to moving information from short-term to long-term memory is rehearsal and meaningful processing. Simply repeating information (maintenance rehearsal) can help, but making it meaningful and connecting it to existing knowledge (elaborative rehearsal) works much better.
Unlike STM, long-term memory appears to have no storage limit. You can keep learning new things throughout your life without "running out of space".
Information in LTM can potentially last forever, though it may become harder to retrieve over time without practice.
Getting information out of LTM requires the right cues and can be affected by interference from other memories.
When people try to remember a list of words, they typically remember the first few words (primacy effect) and the last few words (recency effect) better than those in the middle. This supports the Multistore Model because the first words have time to transfer to long-term memory through rehearsal, while the last words are still in short-term memory. The middle words get lost because they don't benefit from either advantage.
The Multistore Model describes memory as a linear process where information flows from one store to the next. Understanding this flow helps explain why some memories stick while others disappear quickly.
Information begins its journey in the sensory register, where it's briefly held. If we pay attention to it, the information moves to short-term memory. From there, if we rehearse it enough or if it's particularly meaningful, it can transfer to long-term memory for permanent storage.
Attention acts like a filter, determining what information moves from sensory register to short-term memory. Without attention, information is lost within seconds. This is why you might not remember what someone said if you weren't really listening, even though you heard the words.
Like all scientific theories, the Multistore Model has both strengths and weaknesses. It was groundbreaking when first proposed and still influences how we think about memory today, but research has revealed some limitations.
The model successfully explains many memory phenomena and has strong research support. It helps us understand why we forget some things quickly but remember others for years. The distinction between short-term and long-term memory is particularly well-supported by evidence from brain-damaged patients.
Studies of brain-damaged patients show clear differences between short-term and long-term memory, supporting the model's basic structure.
The model has influenced educational practices and memory improvement techniques used in schools and workplaces.
Even though it has limitations, the Multistore Model provided the foundation for more sophisticated memory theories.
Henry Molaison (known as Patient HM) had brain surgery that damaged his hippocampus, leaving him unable to form new long-term memories while his short-term memory remained intact. He could hold a conversation normally but would forget meeting someone within minutes. This case provided crucial evidence for the distinction between short-term and long-term memory stores, strongly supporting the Multistore Model's basic structure.
While the Multistore Model remains influential, modern research has revealed that memory is more complex than originally thought. Scientists now understand that there are different types of long-term memory and that short-term memory is more active than the model suggests.
Today's psychologists recognise that the Multistore Model, while useful, oversimplifies memory. We now know that short-term memory actively processes information rather than just storing it passively and that long-term memory contains several distinct subsystems for different types of information.