Proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin as a structural model. Put
forward that memory consisted of three stores: sensory
register, short term memory and long term memory.
Sensory Register
All stimulus from the outside environment
passes into the sensory register. This consists of
the 5 senses, iconic- seeing, echoic- hearing.
Once attention is paid attention to, it
passes to the short term memory.
Duration: 1/4 -1/2 second
Capacity: sensory experience
Encoding: sense specific e.g
iconic is coded acoustically.
Short Term Memory
Coded mainly acoustically and only
lasts about 18 seconds so is a
temporary store.
Memories are transferred
from short to long term by
maintenance rehearsal.
Maintenance rehearsal is repetition of material to remember it.
Once rehearsed long enough, passes to the long term memory.
Long Term Memory
Potentially permanent store.
When information wants to be recalled from the
long term memory store, it has to be transferred
back to the short term memory through retrieval.
Encoded semantically.
Evaluation
Strengths:
Research support. Baddeley's research
proves that the STM and LTM are two
distinct stores.
Gives us a good understand of the process of STM.
Allows researchers to expand on this model.
Weaknesses:
More than one STM store. When studying a client
with amnesia, stm for digits was very poor when
read aloud, but when read by himself was much
better.
Elaborative rehearsal. Prolonged
rehearsal is not needed for
transfer to LTM, what matters is
the type of rehearsal.