ATKINSON- SHIFFRIN MULTI-STORE MODEL OF MEMORY (1960s)

The Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory suggests that there 3 separate components or systems of memory that interact with one another to form a complete picture of "memory".

• SESORY MEMORY 

• SHORT TERM MEMORY 

• LONG TERM MEMORY

SENSORY MEMORY

This is the entry point for all incoming information where it is retained and stored briefly in its sensory form. Sensory memory can store vast (potentially unlimited) amounts of information and allows us to perceive the world as a series of continuous events rather than countless individual snapshots of moments in time.

Imagine yourelf sitting at the MCG as the grand final is about to start, there are 100,000 people within your immediate environment that you can see and hear. That's a HUGE amount of information that is bombarding your senses at once and a vast majority of it is unimportant and as a result you wont attend to it (pay it attention) and it is lost forever. If you do decide to attend to an aspect of your sensory environment such as your friend sitting next to you then you will transfer that information from your sensory store to your short term memory store.

-          Incoming sensory information is said to be stored in separate systems called “sensory registers”

• Iconic memory – visual information

• Echoic memory – auditory information

ICONIC SENSORY MEMORY

• Duration - 0.2-0.4s

• Capacity - Seemingly limitless

Is the brief storage of incoming visual sensory information and is said to last between .2 and .4 of a second. This allows us to perceive our visual world as a continuous "movie" rather than a series of disconnected still images.

Think about what you would see if you light a sparkler and move it quickly in a circular motion. If you were to do it quick enough (less than half a second) you might actually see the light of the sparkler appear to create a full circle. This is our iconic memory in action. Now think about a world where we have four or five seconds of iconic memory, you would see trails behind every moving object for 5 seconds before it appeared to stand still again.

ECHOIC SENSORY MEMORY

• Duration - 2.0-4.0s

• Capacity - Seemingly limtless

Is the brief storage of incoming auditory information that retains speech and sounds for 3-4 seconds to allow us to make sense of the sounds we hear. We need this to understand the flow of conversations and other sounds we need to hear as continual rather than disconnected.

In both iconic and echoic memory, we need to pay attention to the stimulus if we wish to encode it further into short term memory (STM). If you are looking at something on the internet in class you may hear the teacher speaking, but you may not be attending to it, so that auditory information will not be moved to STM

SHORT TERM MEMORY

• Duration - 12-20s (though can last up to 30)

• Capacity - 7 +/- 2 pieces of information

STM has limited capacity and is stored for a relatively short time. If you are paying attention to or thinking about something it is in your short term memory.

• If I ask you how your socks feel against your skin, you are likely to have that sensation enter your short term memory because you are now attending to it, whereas for the rest of the day it has not been in your short term memory

• Similarly, if I were to tell you that you can always see your nose, but you generally don't attend to it, you will now be likely to notice your nose in your field of vision as you are now paying attention to it.

DURATION OF STM

•  12-20 seconds (starts to deteriorate after 12 seconds, though in rare circumstances it can last up to 30s)

• Starts to decline after 12 seconds and is lost after approximately 18 seconds if its not attended to further through rehearsal

CAPACITY OF STM

• 7 +/- 2 (5 to 9) pieces of information is the suggested limit of STM

• New information can continually enter STM, but it is likely that other information will be lost unless it is rehearsed

Information lost from STM happens through either decay or displacement:

• • Decay - if you don't rehearse the content in your STM or continue to pay attention to it then the memory trace will fade and it may be lost forever

  • Displacement - Due to the limited capacity of STM, it is possible that new incoming information will replace information already stored in STM.

REHEARSAL

• “maintenance rehearsal” is repeating something over and over again such as a phone number in order to try to remember it, but often this can be lost if you are distracted in the process. This "maintains" the infomration in short term memory, but is not necessarily effective in transferring it to Long Term Memory

- "Elaborative rehearsal" is giving something more meaning while rehearsing. It is using memory techniques and linking to information already stored in LTM. As your brain is interacting with the information in a more in depth and personal manner, it is much more effective in encoding information into Long Term Memory

STM FUNCTIONS AS “WORKING MEMORY”

Many psychologists prefer the term “working memory” rather than STM as it represents all of the information that you are consciously working on at any given point in time.

• Sensory information that we attend to is what we are focussed on or working on at that point

• Long term memories that we retrieve into STM are a part of your current consciousness and as such is being "worked on/attended to".

STM provides a workspace to complete tasks we are currently attending to. You might be asked to solve a maths problem, so you retrieve the process from long term memory and incorporate the sensory information of the numbers in front of you. The solving of that problem is utilising that work space of STM and itegrating content from both sensory and long term memory.

LONG TERM MEMORY

• Duration: Seemingly Limitless

• Capacity: Seemingly Limitless

Memories that are adequately rehearsed can be encoded to long term memory. Long term memory is said to be broken down into several individual stores

 EXPLICIT MEMORY (Semantic and Episodic)

• Memory that occurs can be consciously or intentionally retrieved and stated

• Remembering someone's name, a password or a special event are all explicit memories

• Also called “declarative memories” as they are things you can declare or state

• Can be further broken down into episodic and semantic memory

  • • Episodic memory is the memories of personal events and can include details of dates, times and places.

      • A mental personal diary

    • Semantic memory are facts and knowledge

      • General knowledge, areas of personal expertise, rules for spelling or maths, meanings of words

      • These memories are not tagged with a time or a date

      • Semantic and episodic memories may overlap. EG/ you may recall the time you studied to learn facts for a test.

 IMPLICIT MEMORY (Procedural and Classically Conditioned Responses)

• Implicit memories do not require conscious or intentional retrieval. 

• Not facts or events

• motor skills like tying a shoelace, how to brush your teeth or 

• classically conditioned behaviours

• Can be further broken down into procedural and classically conditioned memories

  • • • Procedural memory

      • The memory of motor skills and actions that have been learned previously

      • How to do something

      • Sometimes called skill, motor, body or muscle memory

      • Typically require little or no conscious effort to retrieve

      • Often difficult to put into words and explain (therefore non declarative)

      • Classically conditioned memories

      • Behaviours that are learned through classical conditioning are also considered implicit

      • They require no conscious effort or thought to retrieve the behaviour

      • You may be classically conditioned to experience fear at the sight of a spider

      • You may have tasted yoghurt and felt sick as s child and have had an aversion to yoghurt since

      • These are examples of classically conditioned responses that you don’t have to consciously retrieve