Psych 101 myers mod 26

_____ interference occurs when something you learned before interferes with your recall of something you learn later.

Proactive

_____ occurs when we mistakenly attribute a memory

Source amnesia

Freddy met a woman in the library and immediately thought he knew her. He asked "Have I met you before?" She replied no and walked away, assuming he was trying to ask her out. This could have been an example of:

déjà vu

déjà vu

déjà vu: that eerie sense that "I've experienced this before." Cues from the current situation may subconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience. (p. 343)

One reason our memories fail is because of problems with information:

encoding

If you ask your classmates to draw either side of a U.S. penny from memory, the vast majority will not be very successful. This is likely caused by:

encoding failure.

The surprising ease with which people form false memories best illustrates that encoding and retrieval involve:

memory construction

Our ability to recognize material can make us feel _____, which might lead to poorer performance on certain tests.

overconfident

While taking an American history exam, Marie was surprised and frustrated by her momentary inability to remember the name of the first president of the United States. Her difficulty most clearly illustrates:

retrieval failure.

retroactive interference

retroactive interference: the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information. (p. 338)

Lonnie often has vivid dreams. In the morning, he can recall them in great detail. This sometimes gets him in trouble, because he can't figure out if he is remembering a dream or something that he actually experienced. This problem is known as _____.

source amnesia

Lonnie often has vivid dreams. In the morning, he can recall them in great detail. This sometimes gets him into trouble, because he can't figure out if he is remembering a dream or something that he actually experienced. This problem is known as:

source amnesia.

Recalling something that you had once merely imagined happening as something you had directly experienced best illustrates:

source amnesia.

anterograde amnesia

anterograde amnesia: an inability to form new memories. (p. 335)

Because memories are _____, "hypnotically refreshed" memories may prove inaccurate, especially if the hypnotist asks leading questions.

constructed

It has been demonstrated that professional psychologists who specialize in interviewing children:

could not tell real memories from fake, nor could the children

Whether or not repressed memories can be retrieved by certain therapist-aided techniques is _____.

debated

Jane often studies Spanish and French back to back right after school. She might have trouble remembering the different vocabulary because she is not minimizing _____.

interference

proactive interference

proactive interference: the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information. (p. 338)

According to Thomas Landauer, _____ and critical reflection of material is a type of active studying that will help in retention of newly learned material.

rehearsal

In psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories is called:

repression

Why do we forget?

Anterograde amnesia is an inability to form new memories. Retrograde amnesia is an inability to retrieve old memories. Normal forgetting happens because we have never encoded information; because the physical trace has decayed; or because we cannot retrieve what we have encoded and stored. Retrieval problems may result from proactive (forward-acting) interference, as prior learning interferes with recall of new information, or from retroactive (backward-acting) interference, as new learning disrupts recall of old information. Some believe that motivated forgetting occurs, but researchers have found little evidence of repression.

Ray is trying to determine if his 8-year-old daughter is telling the truth about an incident that happened when she was 4 years old. She claims that someone stole her doll and then ran over it with a car. However, her descriptions of the event are rather vague. What is the likelihood that she is remembering a real event?

Because she is repeating the "gist" and not the details of the event, it is likely a false memory.

_____ occurs when one incorporates misleading information into one's memory of an event

The misinformation effect

He said, "If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing."

William James

Recall

a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve information learnd earlier, as on a fill in the blank test

Which of the following best describes the typical forgetting curve?

a rapid initial decline in retention becoming stable thereafter

Repeatedly imagining nonexistent actions and events is called imagination inflation and can create _____.

false memories

Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck found that most preschoolers and many older children could be induced to report _____.

false memories

Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck found that most preschoolers and many older children could be induced to report:

false memories

When people repeatedly imagine nonexistent actions and events, they can inadvertently create false memories. In one experiment students were asked to repeatedly imagine breaking a toothpick. Following this, they were more likely to think they had actually broken a toothpick. This is known as:

imagination inflation

Raoul decided to ask a hypnotherapist to help him deal with difficult childhood issues. However, if the hypnotherapist asks leading questions, "hypnotically refreshed" memories can be inaccurate because of:

memory construction

misinformation effect

misinformation effect: incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event. (p. 341)

Although Ron typically smokes two packs of cigarettes each day, he recalls smoking little more than one pack per day. This poor memory best illustrates _____.

motivated forgetting

When bits of information do not compete with each other, and actually facilitate memory, it is called _____.

positive transfer

repression

repression: in psychoanalytic theory, the basic defense mechanism that banishes anxiety-arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories from consciousness. (pp. 339, 536

Maximizing _____ cues is a good way to improve your memory of something

retrieval

retrograde amnesia

retrograde amnesia: an inability to retrieve information from one's past

source amnesia

source amnesia: attributing to the wrong source an event we have experienced, heard about, read about, or imagined. (Also called source misattribution.) Source amnesia, along with the misinformation effect, is at the heart of many false memories. (p. 343)

Actively thinking about what we have learned and mentally re-creating the mood and _____ in which the original learning occurred will help us recall information for an exam.

state

The most common response to a(n) _____ experience includes vivid and persistent memories.

traumatic

It is debated whether the _____ mind sometimes forcibly represses painful experiences.

unconscious

Which of the following is the BEST way to master material for a given test?

use distributed practice

The most common response to a traumatic experience involves

vivid and persistent memories

Memories before age _____ are often unreliable.

3

SQ3R is a method for _____ memory.

improving

How reliable are young children's eyewitness descriptions, and why are reports of repressed and recovered memories so hotly debated?

Children are susceptible to the misinformation effect, but if questioned in neutral words they understand, they can accurately recall events and people involved in them. The debate (between memory researchers and some well-meaning therapists) focuses on whether most memories of early childhood abuse are repressed and can be recovered during therapy using "memory work" techniques using leading questions or hypnosis. Psychologists now agree that (1) sexual abuse happens; (2) injustice happens; (3) forgetting happens; (4) recovered memories are commonplace; (5) memories of things that happened before age 3 are unreliable;(6) memories "recovered" under hypnosis or the influence of drugs are especially unreliable; and (7) memories, whether real or false, can be emotionally upsetting.

Which researcher conducted experiments to better understand false memories of childhood traumas?

Elizabeth Loftus

How do misinformation, imagination, and source amnesia influence our memory construction? How do we decide whether a memory is real or false?

In experiments demonstrating the misinformation effect, people have formed false memories, incorporating misleading details, after receiving wrong information after an event, or after repeatedly imagining and rehearsing something that never happened. When we reassemble a memory during retrieval, we may attribute it to the wrong source (source amnesia). Source amnesia may help explain déjà vu. False memories feel like real memories and can be persistent but are usually limited to the gist of the event.

He said that "If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing."

James

How can you use memory research findings to do better in this and other courses?

Memory research findings suggest the following strategies for improving memory: Study repeatedly, make material meaningful, activate retrieval cues, use mnemonic devices, minimize interference, sleep more, and test yourself to be sure you can retrieve, as well as recognize, material.

_______________ occurs when something you learned before interferes with your recall of something you learn later.

Proactive interference