Module 9

The hippocampus ____.

participates in the consolidation of information into long-term memory

fMRIs have shown that prefrontal areas of the brain appear to actively ____ memories that are used less frequently.

suppress

Carlos asks Laura to write down her phone number and e-mail address. He promptly loses the slip of paper. However, he finds that he stills remembers them both. This is possible because ____.

working memory can manage more than one type of information at a time

Which of the following is the best description of interference?

Competition between newer and older information in memory

_____ is a confusion between imagined and true memories.

Confabulation

What theory views the mind as an interconnected network made up of simpler units?

Connectionist theory

_____ refers to the process of acquiring information and transferring it into memory.

Encoding

____ memory is organized like a timeline.

Episodic

Who was part of a team that demonstrated persistent changes in the strength of synapses responsible for several types of learning in sea slugs?

Eric Kandel

The ability to remember seven numbers plus or minus two was first identified by psychologist ____.

George Miller

Alex is starting his day. Which of the following represents a procedural memory?

He brushes his teeth.

What is the main evolutionary benefit of memory?

It allows animals to use information from the past to respond quickly to immediate challenges.

_____ enhances communication between two neurons.

Long-term potentiation

Professor Sevilla asks one of his graduate students, Leland, to finish his class lecture on memory. Leland begins by explaining that nondeclarative memories (1) are unconsciously and effortlessly retrieved memories; (2) are easy to verbalize; (3) include memories for classical conditioning, procedural learning, and priming; and (4) are also known as implicit memories. Which part of his definition is inaccurate?

Nondeclarative memories are easy to verbalize.

Which of these statements about long term memory is NOT true?

Older people are less able to add new information to their long-term memories than younger people are.

_____ refers to the process of finding memories or reconstructing the details that make up a memory.

Retrieval

According to the Atkinson and Shiffrin model of memory, information flows through three stages. What is the correct flow of information in this model?

Sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory

_____ refers to the process of keeping information in the brain for future reconstruction.

Storage

What is memory?

The ability to retain knowledge

A graph of the serial position effect, where the likelihood that an item will be recalled is plotted as a function of the item's position in a list during presentation, takes the shape of a ____.

U-shaped curve

Which of the following is an adaptation of the short-term memory model that involves the active manipulation of multiple types of information simultaneously?

Working memory

A declarative memory that is accessed in a conscious, direct, and effortful manner is also called ____.

an explicit memory

A cue is ____.

any stimulus that helps you access target information

The effect of our motivations on our retrieval of memories ____.

can lead to distortion so that the original information is hardly recognizable

The ability to remember seven numbers plus or minus two refers to the ____.

capacity of short-term memory

A classic method of measuring the retention of material in long-term memory over time is to ____.

compare the rate of learning material the first time to the rate of learning the same material a second time

The reduction in the ability to retrieve rarely used information over time is called ____.

decay

Like other adaptations, forming memories requires _____.

energy

Roger is preparing for his final exam in bioethics. In terms of memory retrieval, the most difficult type of exam question will most likely be ____.

essay

Procedural memories are easy to describe in words.

false: Procedural memories are especially difficult to describe in words.

Mr. Langley's former high school Latin students are holding a 25-year reunion. He surprises them with a vocabulary game show quiz. His students most likely ____.

have retained much of the vocabulary they knew in high school

Learning changes neural structure in that neurons have _____ axon terminals following sensitization.

larger numbers of

Memory aids that link new information to well-known information are called ____.

mnemonics

Kevin is legally required to send a quarterly check to his former wife, whom he divorced 20 years ago. It annoys him greatly, and he finds that he often forgets until several days after the due date. This is likely an example of ____.

motivated forgetting

Scientists have discovered correlations between activity in parts of the human brain and specific components of long-term memory through the observation of ____.

patients with brain damage and brain-imaging studies in healthy participants

Students who pull all-nighters tend to perform _____ on tests the next day.

poorly

Episodic memories are affected by damage to the ____.

prefrontal cortex

Priming is a change in a response to a stimulus as a result of exposure to a ____.

previous stimulus

Superior recall for the first items on a list is known as the ____.

primacy effect

An implicit memory for how to carry out a motor skill or action is called ____.

procedural memory

Aaron is studying for his sensation and perception exam by explaining terms and concepts to his friend Catherine in his own words and providing self-referential examples. This is called ____.

recitation

In most cases, information moves from short-term or working memory to long-term memory through ____.

rehearsal

The three steps of memory are encoding, storage, and _____.

retrieval

Marietta has memorized the capital cities of all 50 states. This is an example of ____ memory.

semantic

Within the category of declarative memories, far more is known about _______ organization than other types of organization.

semantic

Declarative memories are consciously retrieved memories that are easy to verbalize and include ____.

semantic, episodic, and autobiographical information

The first stage of the Atkinson-Shiffrin model involves the retention of large amounts of incoming data for very brief amounts of time. This is called ____.

sensory memory

Most types of memories appear stronger after _____.

sleep

Research has shown that _____ plays an important role in the consolidation of memories.

sleep

Two of the most common causes of retrieval failure are interference and _____.

stress

Memory's benefits to survival are shown in the fact that nearly all animals are able to form memories despite ____.

the high energy costs

The spreading activation model proposes that people organize general knowledge based on ____.

their personal experiences

Recognition tasks are easier than recall tasks because ____.

they provide more cues

Encoding is the process of acquiring information and _____ it into memory.

transferring

It is thought that sleep-related processing helps to reorganize existing memories to accommodate new information.

true

Long-term memory is characterized by ____.

unlimited duration and unlimited capacity

____ codes are used to process touch and other body senses.

Haptic

_____ rehearsal is simple repetition of the material.

Maintenance