Describe and evaluate the multi-store model of memory

According to Atkinson and Shiffrin the multi-store memory has 3 distinctive stores; sensory registry, short term memory (STM) and long term memory (LTM). Information from the environment enters the sensory memory for 0.5 second, if the individual is paying attention this information will enter the STM, from there if the information is rehearsed it will be store into the LTM. Duration is how long the memory lasts, capacity is how much memory an individual can store, encoding is what format it is stores in for example some are stored by sounds, this called acoustic. Some people remember semantically because they associate information with the meaning as information is well remembered if it is better understood.
The sensory registry has duration of up to half a second, with a very large capacity and specific coding for specific senses. Found by Peterson and Peterson the STM has the average duration of 18 seconds, Miller presented research evidence which showed the STM has the capacity of remembering 7+/2- parts of information and mainly encodes acoustically. The LTM has unlimited duration and unlimited capacity however Baddeley (1966) concluded although the LTM encodes visually and acoustically, it mainly stores information semantically.
The multi-store model of memory is the beginning of understanding the memory, so it has been influential on many experiments and research conducted on memory. Experiments have been inducted by Sperling using a tachistoscope to prove the duration of the sensory registry and evidence from Peterson and Peterson about the duration of the STM memory by giving participants trigrams, the evidence for encoding in the LTM is shown by Baddeley (1966) who investigated coding in the STM and LTM memory. The multi-store model of memory has also been useful to explain real life things such as primacy effect, for example an interviewer making their first impressions on an interviewee. Case studies are based on people in real life with real conditions, rather than experiments, this makes it ecologically valid because it is applied to real life, for example the case of HM. HM has brain surgery to reduce symptoms of epilepsy, as a side effect he suffered serious memory loss. He showed no knowledge of current affairs and could not store information about new people as he had difficulty transferring new information into his LTM, however he remembered people for a long time ago. This proves the theory there is more than one part to the memory as his one of HM’s stores were working but the other was not. The same applies to Clive Wearing whose hippocampus was damaged due to a virus so his STM was not working properly however his procedural memory was not damaged so he still remember how to play the piano. The primacy and recency also prove that there are separate stores to the memory.
However the multi-store model of memory is criticised for being too over-simplistic as it suggests memory flows in one direction, rehearsal may not just be repeating things as sometimes information may go directly into the LTM for example in the case of KF. It is also criticised because it suggests memory is passive where information just flows in as opposed to being active and does not take into account the nature of information being remembered. Memory experiments which include learning lists have been criticised methodologically because they lack ecological validity as it is conducted in laboratories and people in real life may not remember information this way.