Cognitive Psychology EXAM 3

Research on the physiology of semantic memory has shown that the representation of different categories in the brain (like living and non-living things) is best described as being

distributed.

The definitional approach to categorization

doesn't work well for most natural objects like birds, trees, and plants.

People often report an annoying memory failure when they walk from one end of the house to the other for something and then forgetting what they went to retrieve when they reach their destination. As soon as they return to the first room, they are reminded of what they wanted in the first place. This common experience best illustrates the principle of

encoding specificity.

The principle that we encode information together with its context is known as

encoding specificity.

Acquiring information and transforming it into long-term memory is

encoding.

If you say that "a Labrador retriever is my idea of a typical dog," you would be using the _____ approach to categorization.

exemplar

Research suggests that the __________ approach to categorization works best for small categories (US presidents).

exemplar

A lesson to be learned from the research on flashbulb memories is that

extreme vividness of a memory does not mean it is accurate.

The principle illustrated when most people are able to recognize a variety of examples of chair even though no one category member may have all of the characteristic properties of "chairs"

family resemblance.

Students, beware! Research shows that __________ does not improve reading comprehension because it does not encourage elaborative processing of the material.

highlighting

According to your text, imagery enhances memory because

imagery can be used to create connections between items to be remembered.

Hebb's idea of long-term potentiation, which provides a physiological mechanism for the long-term storage of memories, includes the idea of

increased firing in the neurons.

Collins and Quillian explained the results of priming experiments by introducing the concept of __________ into their network model.

spreading activation

Items high on prototypicality have __________ family resemblances.

strong

Free recall of the stimulus list "apple, desk, shoe, sofa, plum, chair, cherry, coat, lamp, pants" will most likely yield which of these response patterns?

"apple, cherry, plum, shoe, coat, lamp, chair, pants"

Loftus and Palmer's "car-crash films" experiment described in the text shows how a seemingly minor word change can produce a change in a person's memory report. In this study, the MPI was (were) the word(s)

"smashed."

Your text describes an experiment by Talarico and Rubin (2003) that measured people's memories of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Which of the following was the primary result of that research?

After 32 weeks, participants had a high level of confidence in their memories of the terrorist events, but lower belief in their memories of "everyday" events.

Which statement below is NOT true, based on the results of memory research?

Although eyewitness testimony is often faulty, people who have just viewed a videotape of a crime are quite accurate at picking the "perpetrator" from a lineup.

Which of the following statements is NOT cited in your text as a reason why categories are useful?

Categories provide definitions of groups of related objects.

__________ transforms new memories from a fragile state, in which they can be disrupted, to a more permanent state, in which they are resistant to disruption.

Consolidation

How would you describe the relationship between elaborative rehearsal and maintenance rehearsal in terms of establishing long-term memories?

Elaborative is more effective than maintenance.

Which of the following represents a basic level item?

Guitar

Flashbulb memory is best represented by which of the following statements?

It is memory for circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an emotional event that remains especially vivid but not necessarily accurate over time.

The retroactive interference hypothesis states that the misinformation effects occurs because

MPI obstructs or distorts memories formed during the original experiencing of an event.

According to the levels of processing theory, which of the following tasks will produce the best long-term memory for a set of words?

Making a connection between each word and something you've previously learned

Which of the following statements is true of the cognitive interview technique?

Police allow witnesses to talk with a minimum of interruption from the officer.

__________ cues help us remember information that has been stored in memory.

Retrieval

The "wedding reception" false memory experiment shows that false memories can be explained as a product of familiarity and

source misattribution.

Wei has allergy symptoms. He has gone to his regular doctor and an allergy specialist, but he wasn't given a prescription by either doctor. Instead, he was advised to buy any over-the-counter medicine. While he was in the specialist's waiting area, he read a magazine where he saw three ads for an allergy medicine called SneezeLess. A week later, in a drug store, Wei says to his brother, "My doctor says SneezeLess works great. I'll buy that one." Wei and his doctor never discussed SneezeLess. Wei has fallen victim to which of the following errors?

Source monitoring

Which of the following members would most likely be ranked highest in prototypicality in the "birds" category?

Sparrow

People playing the parlor game "20 Questions" often use hierarchical organization strategies. One player asks up to 20 yes/no questions to determine the identity of an object another player has selected. The player's questions usually start as general and get more specific as the player approaches a likely guess. Initial questions asked by a player are often one of three questions: "Is it an animal?" "Is it a vegetable?" and "Is it a mineral?" Each of these three questions describes which level of categorization?

Superordinate

A script is a type of schema that also include knowledge of

a sequence of actions.

A task for determining how prototypical an object is would be

a task where participants rate the extent to which each member represents the category title.

When cleaning her closet, Nadia finds her 20-year-old wedding photo album. As she flips through the pictures, she starts to cry joyful tears. Seeing the photos and rekindling the emotions of her wedding day most likely activated her

amygdala.

Your text's discussion of false memories leads to the conclusion that false memories

arise from the same constructive processes that produce true memories.

According to levels of processing theory, deep processing results in better memory. However, studies have shown that shallow processing can result in better memory when the individual encodes _____ and is tested _____.

auditorially; auditorially

In Lindsay's "misinformation effect" experiment, participants saw a sequence of slides showing a maintenance man stealing money and a computer. This slide presentation included narration by a female speaker who described what was happening in the slides as they were shown. Results showed that the misinformation effect was greatest when the MPI presentation was

auditory from a female speaker.

Not all of the family members of everyday categories have the same features. Most fish have gills, fins, and scales. Sharks lack the feature of scales, yet they are still categorized as fish. This poses a problem for the __________ approach to categorization.

definitional

Mantyla's "banana / yellow, bunches, edible" experiment demonstrates that, for best memory performance, retrieval cues should be created

by the person whose memory will be tested.

According to the __________ approach to memory, what people report as memories is based on what actually happened plus additional factors such as other knowledge, experiences, and expectations.

constructive

In the "word list" false memory experiment where several students incorrectly remembered hearing the word sleep, false memory occurs because of

constructive memory processes.

Bartlett's experiment in which English participants were asked to recall the "War of the Ghosts" story that was taken from the French Indian culture illustrated the

constructive nature of memory.

Unconscious plagiarism of the work of others is known as

cryptomnesia.

In the "War of the Ghosts" experiment, participants' reproductions contained inaccuracies based on

cultural expectations.

Much research has been dedicated to improving the reliability of eyewitness testimony. One finding reveals that when constructing a lineup,

increasing similarity between "fillers" and a suspect leads to an increased level of missed identification of some guilty suspects.

Imagine that a young child is just learning about the category "dog." Thus far, she has experienced only 2 dogs, one small poodle and the other a large German shepherd. On her 3rd encounter with a dog, she will be LEAST likely to correctly categorize the animal as a dog if that animal

is a dog that does not bark.

According to the typicality effect,

items that are high in prototypicality are judged more rapidly as being in a group.

From the behavior of H.M., who experience memory problems after a brain operation, we can conclude that the hippocampus is important in

long-term memory acquisition.

Olin and Bob are neighbors. Olin loves birds and his father works for the zoo. He has been to a dozen bird sanctuaries, and he and his dad go on bird watching hikes once a month. In contrast, Bob doesn't think much about birds. His only contact with them is in his backyard. It would be correct to say that Olin's standard probably involves

more exemplars than Bob's.

The story in the text about the balloons that were used to suspend a speaker in mid air was used to illustrate the role of __________ in memory.

organization

Experimental evidence suggesting that the standard model of consolidation needs to be revised are data that show that the hippocampus was activated during retrieval of __________ memories.

recent and remote episodic

Elaborative rehearsal of a word will LEAST likely be accomplished by

repeating it over and over.

In the experiment in which participants sat in an office and then were asked to remember what they saw in the office, participants "remembered" some things, like books, that weren't actually there. This experiment illustrates the effect of __________ on memory.

schemas

If we were conducting an experiment on the effect knowledge has on categorization, we might compare the results of expert and non-expert groups. Suppose we compare horticulturalists to people with little knowledge about plants. If we asked the groups to name, as specifically as possible, five different plants seen around campus, we would predict that the expert group would primarily label plants on the _____ level, while the non-expert group would primarily label plants on the _____ level.

subordinate; basic

Based on the information your textbook provided about different category types, jumping from __________ categories results in the largest gain in information.

superordinate level to basic level

Jenkins and Russell (1952) presented a list of words like "chair, apple, dish, shoe, cherry, sofa" to participants. In a test, participants recalled the words in a different order than the order in which they were originally presented. This result occurred because of the

tendency of objects in the same category to become organized.

Jeannie loves to dance, having taken ballet for many years. She is now learning salsa dancing. Although the movements are very different from the dances she is familiar with, she has found a successful memory strategy of linking the new dance information to her previous experiences as a dancer and to her own affection for dance. This strategy suggests reliance on

the self-reference effect.

For the category "fruit," people give a higher typicality rating to "banana" than to "kiwi." Knowing that, we can also reason that

the word "fruit" will lead to a larger priming effect for banana than for kiwi.

Memory performance is enhanced if the type of task at encoding matches the type of task at retrieval. This is called

transfer-appropriate processing.

Asking people to recall the most influential events that happened during their college careers show that __________ in people's lives appear to be particularly memorable.

transition points

Research on eyewitness testimony reveals that

when viewing a lineup, an eyewitness's confidence in her choice of the suspect can be increased by an authority's confirmation of her choice, even when the choice is wrong.