chapter 7: memory (revel)

Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered the law of __________, which says that people tend to remember information better when they spread their learning out over long intervals rather than cram it into short ones.

distributed versus massed practice

__________ allows you to remember auditory stimuli for up to 5 or 10 seconds.

echoic memory

There are various techniques available to help people improve their ability to recall material. For example, when you remember something new by connecting it mentally to something you already know, you are using __________.

elaborative rehearsal

The primary cognitive impairments in patients with Alzheimer's disease are related to __________.

language & memory

The connections among neurons gradually strengthen over time, and do so by means of repetitive stimulation. This process is known as __________.

long-term potentiation

To remember information such as a telephone number until you can finish dialing it, you could just say the number over and over again until it is fixed in your mind. This memory technique is called __________.

maintenance rehearsal

Which mental phenomenon can be defined as "the retention of information over time"?

memory

A memory that is actually false but "feels real" and can be triggered by, for example, looking at a list of associated words, is called a(n) __________.

memory illusion

Although using __________ can sometimes lead to mistakes, they provide us with a frame of reference for interpreting new situations.

schemas

Zhenya remembers that St. Paul is the capital of Minnesota. Alina remembers that she lived in St. Paul when she was 12 years old. Zhenya is demonstrating __________ memory, whereas Alina is demonstrating __________ memory.

semantic; episodic

George Sperling's partial report method studies from the 1960's demonstrated that when a display of 12 letters was viewed, participants retained all of the letters in __________ but not all of them could be transferred to short-term memory.

sensory memory

In which memory system is information retained for the shortest amount of time?

sensory memory

What type of graph would be used to illustrate the primacy and recency effects?

serial position curve

As they develop, children's memories become increasingly sophisticated. Which of the following is not a reason why this occurs?

the presence of siblings increases over time

Because younger children have not developed their meta-memory skills to the extent that older children have, younger children can be mistaken about __________.

their own memory abilities

When someone witnesses a crime in which a gun was involved, her or his description of the perpetrator's appearance can be flawed. This is often due to __________, a psychological process demonstrated in many experiments.

weapon focus

The memory technique that associates rhymes with a list of words in a particular order is called the __________.

pegword method

ZAK, BOL, GID, YAF, and other nonsense syllables were used in some of the earliest studies of memory, conducted by __________.`

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Studies have shown the students perform slightly better on exams if they are tested in the same room where they learned the material. This is evidence for __________.

context-dependent learning

In Elizabeth Loftus's "lost in the mall" study, approximately what percentage of people distinctly remembered being lost in a shopping mall after being told that this had happened to them, even though it did not really happen?

25%

Which of the following statements is true?

It is easier to implant a false memory that is plausible than one that is implausible

What is the general progression of memory loss for patients with Alzheimer's disease?

Memory for recent events fades first, with distant memories usually being the last to go

That frustrating feeling of knowing you know something but cannot pull it out of your brain at the moment you want it is known as the TOT phenomenon, because __________.

TOT stands for tip of the tongue

What is one likely reason why we cannot remember information and events from our own infancy?

The hippocampus takes time to develop, and is only partially developed during infancy

Which of the following is a compelling argument against the existence of repressed traumatic memories?

There is growing evidence that painful and disturbing memories are actually remembered well, and in fact, too well by the people plagued with them

When trying to recall an event, which of the following processes best describes how that takes place?

We actively reconstruct our memories using cues and information available to us

Which part of the brain plays an important role in remembering the emotional content of the memory of a frightening event?

amygdala

Which of the following describes the term "schema"?

an organized knowledge structure or mental model that we have stored in memory

Without even noticing that you are doing it, what memory technique do you use to remember larger quantities of information, even though your short-term memory capacity only holds about nine bits of information?

chunking

Unintentional plagiarism has been attributed to __________, which occurs when someone says they forgot having been exposed to the plagiarized material earlier and thought they had created it themselves.

cryptomnesia

The two primary reasons why short-term memories fade are __________ and __________.

decay; interference

We can use mnemonics to help us __________ information we want to retain in our memories.

encode

In the 1920s, Karl Lashley hoped to discover the __________, the actual physical trace of a memory in the brain. He later concluded that memories are not stored this way.

engram

Scientists devise __________ in order to ensure that the memories elicited in their false-memory-implantation experiments are actually false.

existence proofs

More than 300 convicted prisoners to date have been released because DNA evidence showed they were innocent, despite confident testimony from __________.

eyewitnesses

The fact that people usually correctly remember where they were when they learned of the September 11th, 2001, attacks but are less exact about what they were doing or who told them, leads researchers to believe that __________, although not completely reliable, contain "substantial kernels of accuracy."

flashbulb memories

Although it is presented as the most common kind of memory loss in the popular media, with depictions of someone losing all memory of his or her past, __________ is not actually the most common kind of amnesia.

generalized amnesia

Long-term potentiation enhances the release of which neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft, resulting in enhanced learning?

glutamate

Even before we are born, we can show signs of __________ memory through habituation.

implicit

Most people cannot accurately remember anything they experienced in their earliest years of life. This phenomenon is known as __________.

infantile amnesia

Over time, children develop greater knowledge of their own memory abilities and limitations. The term used to describe this is __________.

meta-memory

Dee Dee has to remember 4 items that he needs at the corner market, so he visualizes the path he will take to get there. He imagines a bar of soap hanging from a large tree, envisions a roll of paper towels next to a stoplight, "sees" a packet of gum on the newspaper rack, and imagines the fire hydrant spurting out soda. Which memory strategy is Dee Dee relying on?

method of loci

The brains of people with Alzheimer's disease contain senile plaques and __________, abnormalities that contribute to both synapse loss and the death of hippocampal and cerebral cortex cells.

neurofibrillary tangles

When we have encountered a stimulus before, we are able to identify it more quickly and easily. The term for this subtype of implicit memory is __________.

priming

Our memory for how to do things is called __________.

procedural memory

Psychologists measure people's memory abilities by assessing three capacities: __________.

recall, recognition, & relearning

Under most circumstances, which is a comparatively easier memory retrieval task to perform?

recognition

Which of the following is one of the three processes of memory?

retrieval

When we are not sure where a memory really came from ("Did it actually happen? Or was it all a dream?") we can use cues such as how vivid and detailed the memory is to determine the answer. This process is called __________.

source monitoring

Which of the following can account for the fact that some people believe they have engaged in a particular action when, in fact, they watched someone else perform that action?

source monitoring failure