Atkinson & Shiffrin's Multi Store Model of Memory (AKA: Two-Process Model) | Memory

 

What did you have for breakfast? What's your mom's name? How do you turn on your computer? if you could answer any of these questions you are using your memory was this might seem like a daft question to ask, what is memory?

The American Psychological associations dictionary of psychology defines memory in three ways

“The ability to retain information or representation of past experience.”

“Specific information or specific past experience that is recalled and the hypothesized part of the brain where traces of information and past experience are stored critically.”

“Memory is a hypothetical construct and therefore everything you learn about memory is theoretical which when it comes to debating can be a lot of fun.”

Cognitive psychologists generally agree that there are three processes of memory one registration this refers to the point that something enters the memory system to storage referring to where the information weights before three retrieval the process of recalling the information. Now it's important to remember that not all psychologists are cognitive psychologists but for now we'll focus on a cognitive model of memory called the process model.

The model was first published by Atkinson and Shiffrin in 1968 and features the fairly familiar constructs of short and long-term memory. We experienced a stimulus via sensory memory a memory store that takes in as much as possible at every single moment of the day. Think about your five senses you never turn them on and off but you aren't always aware of them this is because only the relevant information is passed from sensory memory to short-term memory if you're escaping from a burning building you don't need to know what your taste buds consents but your sense of touch informing you of the temperature will be prioritized equally when you're eating a bowl of chicken soup your sense of taste will be particularly important for your sense of touch making you aware of which parts of your body are in contact with your chair is less relevant.

Short-term memory therefore takes in the seven most relevant chunks of information at any point in time and can last anywhere between 15 to 30 seconds after that point the information will be forgotten unless it's for Hearst. This process called the rehearsal buffer is what keeps information active in our short-term memory before reaching a rehearsal threshold and passing through to long-term memory, a memory store with unlimited capacity which can last anything from a few minutes to a lifetime.

Cognitive psychologists tend to roughly agree on Miller's magic number which says we can hold seven plus or minus 2 chunks of information in short-term memory and after a process of rehearsal information is transferred to long-term memory for later recall any information that makes it to short-term memory but is not rehearsed enough to transfer to long-term memory is simply forgotten and won't be available for later recall sounds simple enough well most of the content should be fairly familiar as the concept of primary and secondary memory has been floating around. At the time of William James in 1890 and a key strength of this model is that it is very clear to understand and test however as subsequent studies have suggested there is much more to memory or memories then Atkinson and Shiffrin might have imagined.

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