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AQA A Level Psychology Memory
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This document covers all of the memory chapter for A level AQA psychology.
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AO1 AO3MULTI-STORE MODEL OF MEMORY A strength of the MSM is that there are cases of individuals
Proposed by Attkinson and Shiffin, the MSM of memory is a with memory disorders that support the theories of the
linear model that passes information from one store to multi-store model. One of them has become especially well
another in a linear manner. The first store consists of the known – the case of patient ‘HM’. He had intact memories
sensory store, which detects stimuli from the environment.
prior to surgery (LTM) but was unable to make any new
This store has an unlimited capacity but a duration of a
memories after surgery. According to the MSM, the STM and
fraction of a section. Information in this store is coded via all 5
senses. If this stimulus is paid attention to, it enters the short LTM are two separate stores. HM was unable to form new
term memory store, which has a capacity of 5-8 items, and a memories since his STM store was damaged, but the
duration of 15-30 seconds. This information is usually memories in his LTM remained intact as it is a separate store.
encoded acoustically. If this information is then rehearsed, This is a strength as it supports the MSM of memory’s
they enter the long term memory store. This information is proposal that there are separate, distinct stores for the types
encoded semantically. This store has an unlimited capacity
of memories. This increases the validity of the study. Prior to
and duration. Information from this store can be retrieved
whenever needed. At each store, if information isn’t retrieved the MSM, memory was perceived as one big store.
or rehearsed for a certain period of time, it decays. However,
this depends on the significance of the information. A weakness of the MSM is that it is way too oversimplified.
The model suggests that there is one store in short term
memory and one store in long term memory. However brain
scans such as the ones done by Tulving have proven that
there are different types of long term memory such as
episodic, semantic and procedural memory. Furthermore,
Clive Wearing contracted a viral infection causing extensive
brain damage and lost his long-term declarative memory,
however, his procedural memory still remained intact e.g. he
was still able to play the piano. This is a weakness as the
MSM fails to take into account the different types of long term
memory. This reduces the validity of the MSM.
A further weakness of the MSM is that it places too much
emphasis on the rehearsal and there’s contradictory evidence
against this. For example, Brown and Kulik found that
flashbulb memories were a special type of memory that
required no rehearsal to be stored long term. These memories
are retained because they are funny, distinctive or significant.
This is a problem because MSM argues that for any memory
to be encoded into the long term, it needs to be rehearsed.
Therefore this further reduces the validity of the MSM.
WORKING MODEL OF MEMORY A strength of the WMM is that physiological Evidence from
Baddely & Hitch criticised MSM’s oversimplification of the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans shows that when
STM store, and came up with the WMM to explain the idea of people do verbal tasks, their Brocha’s area lights up red and
a unitary STM in more depth. They proposed that STM is when given a visual task, their Occipital area lights up red.
subdivided into 4 distinct units:
These brain scans show short term memory is not unitary; it
The Central Executive is the main part of the WMM and it
has to be subdivided. If it was unitary the same part of the
controls the other ‘slave’ components. The CE receives
information from the sensory store and decides which ‘slave’ brain would light up. But the fact that two different parts of
unit to send this information. It encodes information from each the brain lit up depending on the task shows that there are
of the senses differently and processes it differently based on two different short term memory stores; it’s subdivided. Brain
whether it’s visual, auditory etc. CE may have more than one scan evidence is physical, objective, empirical evidence to
information at the same time, so it allocates that information support what you’re saying. This is a strength as it
to different slave components. CE itself is not good at dealing
significantly increases the validity of the WMM.
with info on it’s own as it has little to almost no capacity, but
, is infact a decision maker. It decides what we pay attention to
based on what's important e.g. when I’m driving, I pay
attention to the road and the visual information. A weakness of the WMM is that the central executive
With practice, tasks become more automated and require component is oversimplified. The CE has two main tasks:
less capacity (fewer attentional demands) of the CE - frees us decision making and reasoning tasks. The WMM proposes
to perform other tasks. For example, after a while of driving, I that the central executive is unitary; which means if an
don’t need to pay attention to the road, I can listen to the radio
individual damages their central executive, they would lose
and podcasts etc.
The phonological loop is the auditory slave system. It their decision making and their reasoning. However, after
encodes information acoustically (via sound). It’s split into two having a tumour removed, EVR performed well on tests
parts: requiring reasoning which suggested his CE was intact,
Primary Acoustic Store: linked to speech perception (our however he had poor decision making skills. This evidence
ability to understand speech). It receives auditory info and can suggests CE is not unitary and in fact subdivided. This
hold it for 1-2 seconds (limited duration). Remembers sound
decreases the validity of the WMM and presents it as
in the same way it was presented.
oversimplified.
Articulatory Process (AP): linked to speech production. Used
to rehearse and store sounds collected by PAS. It’s the inner
voice that repeats the sound in your head. Info from PAS is A further weakness of the working memory model is that it
repeated in a loop to prevent decay eg repeating telephone does not take into account musical memory. For example
number in your head. Capacity = 2 seconds of speech. Bertz found that when people listen to instrumental music
and are asked to do a task, they can do it. However, when
given lyrical music and asked to perform a task, they faced
When i listen to miss in class, i'm using my PAS and when difficulty. This is a weakness because it shows that there may
miss asks me a q and i have to answer it, i use my AP. be a separate store for musical memory, which is not
accounted for by WMM.
The next store of the WMM is the visuo spatial sketchpad.
This store deals with visual information. It has a limited
capacity of 3-4 objects (which makes sense since they’re part
of the STM store). Similar to the PL, the VSSP is broken into
two parts:
The first part is the visual cache: holds information about the
form/shape and color of things.
The second part of the VSSP is called the inner scribe: deals
with spatial information e.g. when i used to do backstroke and
slow down when i reached near the wall. Deals with where
stuff is. Follows a ‘mental map’.
Episodic buffer: was added later into the original WMM in
2000 because of the fact that there’s some tasks that require
both visual and verbal information at the same time e.g.
listening to miss and making notes at the same time or
following direction from a GPS. This store integrates the PL
and VSSP. It also has a limited capacity.
TYPES OF LONG TERM MEMORY One strength of the theory is that it has research support from
The types of long term memory theory argued that the clinical evidence; case studies from patients of amnesia such
multi-store model of memory was too simplistic as it as HM. HM was a victim of amnesia; he displayed normal
describes memory as ‘unitary’; with Tulving being of the first functioning of his semantic memory; for example he could
understand the concept of a dog. However, his episodic
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