Chapter 6: The acquisition of memories and the working-memory system

Which of the following study strategies would be effective for recalling the information from this class long after it is over, and which would only be effective for recalling the information in the immediate future?

Effective for Long-Term Recall Explain each concept to a classmate using an example from your own life. Create concept maps to illustrate the connections between ideas. Spread your learning out over multiple episodes. Effective Only for Short-Term Recall Develop acronyms to remember lists of information. Read the textbook again the day before the exam.

You are participating in a research study. In the first condition, you are shown a grid of letters for 50 ms and then asked to report all of the letters you saw. In the second condition, the grid of letters is immediately followed by one of three auditory cues to signal which of the three rows of letters to report. Which statement describes your likely performance across these conditions?

In the first condition you will only report a random three or four letters, but in the second condition you will consistently report most of the letters from the cured row.

Identify the examples as either types of information stored in long-term memory or types of information stored in working memory.

Information Stored in Long-Term Memory grammar rules of your native language details of a birthday party you attended last week Information Stored in Working Memory the telephone number you are currently repeating out loud until you find a piece of paper to write it down the last word your friend says to you while in conversation

Which statement best describes the primary function of working memory?

It severs as a way to process multiple pieces of information that are simultaneously activated in our thoughts.

Match each mnemonic strategy for learning a sequence of words to the corresponding description.

Peg-Word System: placing each item in specific locations within a well-organized structure Interactive Imagery: linking the items to one another through mental pictures Acronym: organizing information by the first letter of each item

Select the region of the serial position curve at which words have the greatest likelihood of being transferred into long-term memory.

Primary effect

Fill in the blanks to complete the passage about the impact of concurrent articulation on digit-span performance.

The digits in a digit-span task are maintained in working memory through subvocalization in the articulatory loop and active processing in the central executive. With concurrent articulation, rehearsal of the numbers by subvocalization is disrupted, which results in a smaller measure of memory span.

Identify the strategies for remembering a list of words as examples of either maintenance rehearsal or elaborative rehearsal.

elaborative rehearsal: imagining yourself walking across campus and placing each word in a different location creating a story that links each word in the list together maintenance rehearsal: repeating each word aloud over and over again

keeping a telephone number in mind

phonological buffer

While describing the movie she saw last night to a friend, Kavya cannot remember the name of her favorite actress who played the lead role. Later, the actress's name suddenly pops into Kavya's mind. Which phase of memory was likely disrupted when Kavya was talking with her friend?

retrieval

Match each set of encoding instructions to the corresponding learning process.

shallow incidental processing Indicate how many letters are in each word. intentional learning Memorize these words. You will be asked to recall them later. deep incidental processing Rate on a scale from 1 to 5 how much you like each word.

Gaining new information at the (1) stage of memory depends both on the richness of the knowledge already in (2) to which you can connect the new information and on the degree of organization supported by the (3) paths so that you can find the new material later.

1. Acquisition 2. Storage 3. Retrieval

Place the phases of memory in order from first to last.

1. Acquisition 2. Storage 3. Retrieval

Place the individuals in order according to how quickly they would learn a new dance routine, from fastest to slowest.

1. Professional ballet dancer 2. Professional basketball player 3. college psychology professor

Attending to the meaning of items at (1) facilitates (2) not by making the representations of those items stronger, but by making connections to existing items in memory so that they are more easily found later in long-term memory.

1. encoding 2. retrieval

According to the modal model, raw visual inputs are held in [1] while raw auditory inputs are held in [2] for a few seconds before either being selected for further processing or fading away.

1. iconic memory 2. echoic memory

Place the sentences in order according to how helpful they would be for facilitating recall of the word "house," from most to least helpful.

As I walked through the neighborhood, I saw some children playing frisbee with their dad in front of their house. the neighborhood has mostly two-family houses this is a house

Identify the statements that characterize the differences between working memory and long-term memory.

Correct Answer(s) Accessing information held in long-term memory is more difficult than accessing information held in working memory. The amount of information held in long-term memory is much larger than the amount of information held in working memory. Incorrect Answer(s) Information held in long-term memory is more fragile than information held in working memory. Getting information into long-term memory is easier than getting it into working memory.

Which of the following statements are evidence that complicated material is best learned by making connections to existing knowledge, rather than by using mnemonic strategies?

Correct Answer(s) Information presented within a recognizable semantic context is recalled better than information presented without a context. Students who receive higher grades in a course are more likely to remember the material over a longer delay of time. Individual items that are recognized as a meaningful structure are recalled better than those that are not. Incorrect Answer(s) A sequence of unrelated items that is organized into a single unit is recalled better than a sequence that is not.

Which of the following observations support the view that operation-span measures better reflect working-memory's function as a highly active information processor than digit-span measures?

Correct Answer(s) Measures of operation span (but not digit span) correlate with performance on reasoning, reading comprehension, and standardized academic tests. There is no one specific area of the brain that serves as working memory. Incorrect Answer(s) Digit-span tasks provide an unreliable measure of working memory because its value increases with practice. The engagement of chunking strategies contaminates digit-span measures, but not operation-span measures.

Which of the following observations provide evidence that the articulatory rehearsal loop maintains information in a phonological form?

Correct Answer(s) People who repeat aloud a phrase like "Tah-Tah-Tah" while completing a span task have poorer recall. People will often make "sound-alike" errors when recalling visual words from working memory. People will often make "sound-alike" errors when recalling auditory words from working memory. Incorrect Answer(s) People who categorize pictures of famous faces while completing a span task have poorer recall.

Which of the following observations have been used to support the claim that the primacy effect and recency effect observed in the serial position curve reflect different types of memory?

Correct Answer(s) Recall of the first words in the list activates a brain area associated with long-term memory, whereas recall of the last words in the list activates a brain area associated with working memory. If you are asked to do another activity (e.g., solve math problems) for 30 seconds between hearing a list of words and then saying the words you remember, word recall will be worse for the last words in the list but unchanged for the first words in the list. When the rate of word presentation is slowed down, word recall is improved for the first words in the list but unchanged for the last words in the list. Incorrect Answer(s) If there is a delay of 30 seconds between hearing a list of words and then saying the words you remember, with no activity during the delay, word recall will be worse for the first words in the list but unchanged for the last words in the list.

Which of the following statements characterize how the modal model of memory has been modified in current proposals?

Correct Answer(s) Short-term memory has been recast as working memory. Working memory is no longer considered a place that information must pass through to get into long-term memory. Incorrect Answer(s) Sensory memory plays a larger role in current models. Long-term memory and working memory are now considered one and the same.

Which of the following statements illustrate how mnemonic strategies improve memory?

Correct Answer(s) They create connections between the to-be-remembered items. They associate to-be-remembered material to a well-learned structure. They organize the to-be-remembered material into a meaningful structure. Incorrect Answer(s) They help you understand the meaning of the to-be-remembered material.

Which of the following actions would displace information out of working memory?

Correct Answer(s) placing more than nine items in working memory switching attention and engaging in another task Incorrect Answer(s) increasing the rate at which items are added to working memory repeating items in working memory out loud over and over again

Which of the following topics would be best learned using mnemonic strategies?

Correct Answer(s) the order of colors in a rainbow the number of days in each month Incorrect Answer(s) the complex derivation of a mathematical formula the explanation for how mnemonic strategies work

Which of the following strategies would promote good memory connections?

Correct Answer(s) thinking about how the new information is similar to information already in long-term memory thinking about how the new information is distinct from information already in long-term memory Incorrect Answer(s) passively looking at the new information without any deep processing or attention thinking about the new information stripped away from the learning context

Researchers are investigating what conditions promote better recall. The researchers briefly show two groups of participants a series of numbers, then ask participants to say the numbers aloud in their proper sequence. One group is given the hint that the numbers are organized in a mathematical pattern—they are squares of consecutive integers—and the other group is not. The group that was given a hint shows better recall for the digit sequences. What is the reason for this? 149162536496481

The participants in the hint group were more likely to look for connections to existing knowledge.

Anna's professor asks her to participate in a demonstration of the digit-span task. The first time she does the task, she is only able to accurately repeat back lists of seven digits or less. During the second time through the task, however, she starts to think of the digits as dates of historical events, and she is able to accurately repeat lists as long as 28 items. What strategy has Anna engaged in to improve her apparent memory span?

chunking

Which type of processing leads to the best memory recall?

deep and elaborate

Following the storyline of a movie

episodic buffer

Place the strategies in order according to the memory recall performance they would yield, from best to worst.

reading your textbook and thinking about how the ideas connect to the lecture material and your everyday life.

imagining the spatial layout of your home

visuospatial buffer