Cognitive Connie

Let's explore Memory

Understand how memories are encoded, stored, and retrieved — and why we forget. Covers the multi-store model, Baddeley's working memory model, and the causes of forgetting.

Find an area of interest

The Multi-Store Model

Atkinson and Shiffrin's multi-store model (1968) was the first major structural account of human memory — proposing three distinct stores through which information flows in sequence: the sensory register, short-term memory (STM), and long-term memory (LTM).

Study this →

The Working Memory Model

Baddeley and Hitch (1974) replaced the multi-store model's unitary short-term store with a multicomponent working memory system — one that not only stores information but actively manipulates it. The model has been expanded twice: in 1986 Baddeley provided a fuller account of the slave systems, and in 2000 he added the episodic buffer as a fourth component.

Study this →

Forgetting

Forgetting is not a failure of memory — it is an integral part of how memory works. Understanding why we forget requires distinguishing between storage failure (information was never durably encoded or has decayed) and retrieval failure (information is stored but currently inaccessible).

Study this →

Pick a quiz to get going

01

The Multi-Store Model

8 questions · ~12 min · Intermediate

Sensory registerSTMLTMCodingCapacityDuration
Start quiz

02

The Working Memory Model

8 questions · ~12 min · Intermediate

Central executivePhonological loopVisuospatial sketchpadEpisodic buffer
Start quiz

03

Forgetting

8 questions · ~12 min · Intermediate

InterferenceRetrieval failureContext-dependent forgettingEbbinghaus
Start quiz

Or why not try them all?

Launch game

Play through all Memory quizzes as a guided path.

SubjectsMemory
The Multi-Store ModelThe Working Memory ModelForgetting

Study guides & reading

Study guide
→

Memory Models and Forgetting: From the Multi-Store Model to Retrieval Failure

The multi-store model, working memory, levels of processing, interference, cue-dependence — memory research has produced more models than consensus. What you need for exams: the key studies in sequence, the live disputes between them, and the answers that score.