Psych Test study guide 11 - 31 - 17

Echoic memories fade after approximately:

3 to 4 seconds.

Our short-term memory span is approximately _____ items.

7

Which of the following illustrates the constructive nature of memory?

Although elderly Mrs. Harvey, who has Alzheimer's disease, has many gaps in her memory, she invents sensible accounts of her activities so that her family will not worry.

The three-stage processing model of memory was proposed by:

Atkinson and Shifrin.

True or False: Although repression has not been confirmed experimentally, therapists often believe that it happens.

False

True or False: Overlearning material by continuing to restudy it beyond mastery often disrupts recall.

False

True or False: Recall of childhood abuse through hypnosis indicates that memory is permanent, due to the reliability of such reports.

False

True or False: Recall of newly acquired knowledge is no better after sleeping than after being awake for the same period of time.

False

True or False: The persistence of a memory is a good clue as to whether or not it derives from an actual experience.

False

Brenda has trouble remembering her new five-digit ZIP plus four-digit address code. What is the most likely explanation for the difficulty Brenda is having>

Nine digit are at or above the upper limit of most people's short-term memory capacity.

True or False: Generally speaking, memory for pictures is better than memory for words.

True

True or False: Most people do not have memories of events that occurred before the age of 3.

True

True or False: Studies by Ebbinghaus show that most forgetting takes place soon after learning.

True

True or False: Studying that is distributed over time produces better retention than cramming.

True

True or False: Time spent in developing imagery, chunking, and associating material with what you already know is more effective than time spent repeating information again and again.

True

Which of the following best describes the typical forgetting curve?

a rapid initial decline in retention becoming stable thereafter

Darren was asked to memorize a list of letters that included v, q, y, and j. He later recalled these letters as e, u, i, and k, suggesting that the original letters had been encoded:

acoustically.

Jenkins and Dallenbach found that memory was better in subjects who were _____ during the retention interval, presumably because _____ was reduced.

asleep; interference

Experimenters gave people a list of words to be recalled. When the participants were tested after a delay, the items that were best recalled were those:

at the beginning of the list.

The first thing Karen did when she discovered that she had misplaced her keys was to re-create in her mind the day's events. That she had little difficulty in doing so illustrates:

automatic processing.

One way to increase the amount of information in memory is to group it into larger, familiar units. The process is referred to as:

chunking.

The disruption of memory that occurs when football players have been knocked out provides evidence for the importance of:

consolidation in the formation of new memories.

Walking through the halls of his high school 10 years after graduation, Tom experienced a flood of old memories. Tom's experience showed the role of:

context effects.

Definition/Description: sensory memory that decays more slowly than visual sensory memory

echoic memory

Definition/Description: the process by which information gets into the memory system

encoding

The three steps in memory information processing are:

encoding, storage, and retrieval

Elderly Mr. Flanagan can easily recall his high school graduation, but he cannot remember the name of the president of the USA. Evidently, Mr. Flanagan's _____ memory is better than his _____ memory.

episodic; semantic

Amnesia patients typically experience disruption of:

explicit memories.

Textbook chapters are often organized into _____ in order to facilitate information processing.

hierarchies

Amnesisa victims typically have experienced damage to the _____ of the brain.

hippocampus

Visual sensory memory is referred to as:

iconic memory.

Definition/Description: mental pictures that aid memory

imagery

According to the serial position effect, when recalling a list of words you should have the greatest difficulty with those:

in the middle of the list.

According to memory researcher Daniel Schacter, blocking occurs when:

information is on the tip of our tongue, but we can't get it out.

It is easier to recall information that has just been presented when the information:

is heard rather than seen.

After suffering damage to the hippocampus, a person would probably:

lose the ability to store new facts.

The misinformation effect provides evidence that memory:

may be reconstructed during recall according to how questions are framed.

Definition/Description: matching each of a series of locations with a visual representation of to-be-remembered items

method of loci

Memory techniques such as the method of loci acronyms, and the peg-word system are called:

mnemonic devices.

Definition/Description: the phenomenon in which one's mood can influence retrieval

mood-congruent memory

Being in a bad mood after a hard day of work, Susan could think of nothing positive in her life. This is best explained as an example of:

mood-congruent memory.

Repression is an example of:

motivated forgetting.

Definition/Description: "one is a bun, two is a shoe" mnemonic device

peg-word system

Studies by Loftus and Palmer, in which people were quizzed about a film of an accident, indicate that:

people's recall may easily be affected by misleading information.

Definition/Description: a memory sin of intrusion

persistence

In an effort to remember the name of the classmater who sat behind her in fifth grade, Martina mentally recited the names of other classmates who sat near her. Martina's effort to refresh her memory by activating related associations is an example of:

priming.

Definition/Description: old knowledge interferes with new learning

proactive interference

When Carlos was promoted, he moved into a new office with a new phone extension. Every time he is asked for his phone number, Carlos first thinks of his old extension, illustrating the effects of:

proactive interference - old is being interfered with

The concept of working memory is analogous to a computer's:

random-access memory (RAM).

Which of the following measures of retention is the least sensitive in triggering retrieval?

recall

Complete this analogy: Fill-in-the-blank test questions are to multiple-choice questions as:

recall is to recognition.

Research on memory construction reveals that memories:

reflect a person's biases and assumptions.

Information is maintained in short-term memory only briefly unless it is:

rehearsed.

Definition/Description: a measure of memory

relearning

Lashley's studies, in which rats learned a maze and then had various parts of their brains surgically removed, showed that the memory:

remained no matter which area of the brain was tampered with.

Which of the following is the best example of a flashbulb memory?

remembering what you were doing on September 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed trains into the World Trade Center towers.

Definition/Description: the blocking of painful memories

repression

Lewis cannot remember the details of the torture he experienced as a prisoner of war. According to Freud, Lewis's failure to remember these painful memories is an example of:

repression.

Which of the following is not a measure of retention?

retrieval

At your high school reunion you cannot remember the last name of your homeroom teacher. Your failure to remember is most likely the result of:

retrieval failure.

The process of getting information out of memory storage is called:

retrieval.

Definition/Description: new learning interferes with previous knowledge

retroactive interference

After finding her old combination lock, Janice can't remember its combination because she keeps confusing it with the combination of her new lock. She is experiencing:

retroactive interference.

Craik and Tulving had research participants process words visually, acoustically, or semantically. In a subsequent recall test, which type of processing resulted the greatest retention?

semantic

Definition/Description: memory for a list of words is affected by word order

serial position effect

Kandel and Schwartz have found that when learning occurs, more of the neurotransmitter _____ is released into synapses.

serotonin

Definition/Description: misattributing the origin of an event

source amnesia

Which of the following was not recommended as a strategy for improving memory?

speed reading

Which of the following sequences would be best to follow if you wanted to minimize interference-induced forgetting in order to improve your recall on the psychology midterm?

study, sleep, test

Memory researchers are suspicious of long-repressed memories of traumatic events that are "recovered" with the aid of drugs or hypnosis because:

such memories are unreliable and easily influenced by misinformation.

Definition/Description: the lingering effects of misinformation

suggestibility

When he was 8 years old, Frank was questioned by the police about a summer camp counselor suspected of molesting children. Even though he was not, in fact, molested by the counselor, today 19-year-old Frank "remembers" the counselor touching him inappropriately. Frank's false memory is an example of which "sin" of memory?

suggestibility

Long-term potentiation refers to:

the increased efficiency of synaptic transmission between certain neurons following learning.

To help him remember the order of ingredients in difficult recipes, master chef Guy Fieri often associates them with the route he walks to work each day. Giulio is using which mnemonic technique?

the method of loci

During basketball practice Jan's head was painfully elbowed. If the trauma to her brain disrupts her memory, we would expect than Jan would most be likely to forget:

the name of the play during which she was elbowed.

Definition/Description: the fading of unused information over time

transience

Although you can't recall the answer to a question on your psychology midterm, you have a clear mental image of the textbook page on which it appears. Evidently, your _____ encoding of the answer was _____.

visual; automatic