PSY Exam 3 Textbook Questions/KEY Points in textbook

Loretta wanted to remember a list of important memory researchers, so she pictured them all visiting her apartment, she imagined Elizabeth Loftus playing video games in the living room, Hermann Ebbinghaus napping in the bathtub, Henry Roediger and Kathleen McDermott dancing in the kitchen, and so on. Loretta is using the memory strategy called ____________

(A) The method of loci; The method of loci involves mentally placing objects in various spots in a familiar location.

Ludwig had an extraordinary memory for sound. Even when he lost his hearing in his later years, he was still able to create beautiful music. This demonstrates his well developed _______ codes.

(A) acoustic; Acoustic codes represent information as sequences of sounds, such as a tune or rhyme

Remembering your bank account number (2171995) as your birthday (February, 17th, 1995) is an example of ______.

(A) chunking; chunking involves grouping information into meaningful units that can be stored

Janetta has been studying for tomorrow's test while drinking strong caffeinated coffee. A friend tells Janetta that her test score can be improved if she takes advantage of state-dependent memory by ______.

(A) drinking strong, caffeinated coffee just before the test; State-dependent memory is helped or hindered by similarities or differences in a person's internal state during learning versus recall.

When her brother said he had gotten a job in a bookstore, Danielle immediately assumed it would be a large room with books along the walls, a magazine section, a children's section, and cash registers near the door. But he had been hired by an online store, so Danielle was wrong. Her mistaken assumptions occurred because of _____________, which is/are predicted by the ________________ model of memory

(A) spontaneous generalizations; neural networks; Spontaneous generalizations are produced by PDP networks.

Jerry, a factory worker, suffered a brain injury when a steel beam fell on his head, Jerry cannot remember anything that has happened since the accident. Jerry is experiencing ___________ amnesia.

(B) anterograde; Anterograde amnesia is the inability to form new long-term memories following a brain injury

Henry is talking about his high school graduation ceremony. He remembers that his parents and grandparents were there and that afterward they gave him a laptop computer. Henry's memory of this event is both ________ and _______.

(B) episodic; explicit; Episodic memory is a person's recall of a specific event that happened while that person was present; explicit memory involves the processes through which people try to remember something.

Raquel was still studying ten minutes before her test. As she entered the classroom, she kept repeating the last sentence she read: "Henry VIII had six wives." She was using ______ to keep this information in mind.

(B) maintenance rehearsal; Maintenance rehearsal is a method of keeping information in short-term memory by repeating it.

In a memory study, half the students in a class were told to expect multiple choice questions on their upcoming exam and the other half was told to expect essay questions. Students did better if they got the type of exam they expected, which is consistent with the _________ model of memory.

(B) transfer-appropriate processing; The transfer-appropriate processing model of memory suggests that a critical factor in memory is how the encoding process matches up with what is later retrieved.

Larry was thrilled when he met the girl of his dreams at the mall. She told him her phone number before she left, but if Larry doesn't use any rehearsal methods, he will remember the number for only about ___.

(B) twenty seconds; Unrehearsed information stays in short-term memory for about eighteen seconds.

When asked if there was a fever thermometer in her doctor's office, Careen says she remembers seeing one, even though it wasn't actually there. This is an example of _______, which is influenced by ______.

(C) constructive memory; schemas; In the process of constructive memory, people use generalized knowledge, or schemas, to fill in gaps in the information they encode and retrieve.

Riesa was uncomfortable when she was introduced to her roommate's cousin. She was not aware of it, but the cousin reminded her of a hated classmate in elementary school. This incident provides an example of the operation of ____ memory.

(C) implicit; Implicit memories are not purposefully recalled but can influence behavior.

The use of DNA evidence has had what effect on the U.S. legal system's view of eyewitness testimony. It has

(C) revealed that eyewitness testimony has put many people in prison for crimes they did not commit. ; Recent use of DNA evidence has revealed that some people in prison for serious crimes did not commit those crimes.

Reepal listens as her father describes a party the family is planning. She also smells popcorn from the kitchen, hears the radio playing, notices flashes of lightening outside, and feels too warm in her sweater. Yet Reepal is able to transfer the information about the party to her short-term memory, primarily because of _______.

(C) selective attention; Selective attention allows Reepal to focus on the most important information.

Lisbeth's mother once told her to remember that "the nail that stands out will get pounded down." But when Lisbeth tried to tell a friend about this saying, she remembered it as "if you stand out too much you'll in trouble." Her problem in recalling the exact words is probably due to the fact that encoding in long-term memory is usually ______ .

(C) semantic; Semantic memory contains general knowledge not linked to a specific event.

Molly, a high school student, knows that she knows the name of her kindergarten teacher, but she can't quite remember it when asked. This experience is called _______.

(C) the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon; It represents the retrieval of incomplete knowledge

Nesta had made a list of twenty CDs that she wanted to check out of the library, but she forgot to bring it with her. Nesta is most likely to remember the CDS that were at the ___ of the list.

(D) beginning and end; The serial position curve predicts that the first items (primary effects) and the last items (recency effect) will be best remembered.

The brain area Jerry (above) most likely damaged was the ______.

(D) hippocampus; The hippocampus is important for transferring information from short-term to long-term memory.

Berean studied French during his first year of college and then started learning Spanish in his second year. Now he is having difficulty remembering his Spanish vocabulary because the French words keep popping into his mind. This is an example of ______.

(D) proactive inhibition; Proactive inhibition occurs when old information disrupts the learning of new information.

Robin memorized the names of all of the U.S. presidents when she was 10. 20 years later, she had forgotten most of them, so she was pleasantly surprised that she could learn the a second time much more quickly than the first. This faster relearning time is an example of what Ebbinghaus called ______ .

(D) savings; As Ebbinghaus discovered, relearning takes much less time than original learning. This difference represents the savings from one learning to the next.

anchoring bias (anchoring heuristic)

a shortcut in the thought process that involves adding new information to existing information to reach a judgement

logic

a system of formulas for drawing valid conclusions

procedural memory (procedural knowledge)

a type of memory containing information about how to do things

sensory memory

a type of memory that is very brief but lasts long enough to connect one impression to the next

Encoding is usually _____ in short-term memory and _____ in long-term memory

acoustic; semantic

concepts

categories of objects, events, or ideas that have common properties

If it is easier to remember something in the place where you learned it, you have _____ learning.

context-dependent

using mnemonic strategies and the PQ4R system to better remember course material are examples of the value of ______ rehearsal

elaborative

Deliberately trying to remember something means using your ______ memory.

explicit

The capacity of short-term memory is about ____ to ____ items.

five; nine

schemas

generalizations about categories of objects, places, events, and people

To minimize forgetting, you should review lecture notes _______ after a lecture ends.

immediately [or as soon as possible]

spreading activation

in semantic network theories of memory, a principle that explains how information is retrieved

explicit memory

information retrieved through a conscious effort to remember something

distributed practice

learning new information in many study sessions that are spaced across time

The value of elaborative rehearsal over maintenance rehearsal has been cited as evidence for the ______________ model of memory.

levels-of-processing

"Cramming" illustrates _______ practice that usually leads to ______ long-term retention than ______ practice

massed; poorer[or less]; distributed

information-processing system

mechanisms for receiving information, representing it with symbols, and manipulating it

context specific memory (context-specific learning)

memories that are helped or hindered by similarities or differences between the contexts in which they are learned and recalled

epidsodic memory

memory for events in one's own past

semantic memory

memory for generalized knowledge about the world

neural network models of memory

memory models in which new experiences are seen as changing one's overall knowledge base

sensory registers

memory systems that briefly hold incoming information

working memory

memory that allows us to mentally work with, or manipulate, information being held in short-term memory

state-dependent memory (state-dependent learning)

memory that is helped or hindered by similarities or differences in a person's internal state during learning versus recall

Thinking is the manipulation of __________________.

mental representations

schemas

mental representations of categories of objects, places, events, and people

scripts

mental representations of familiar sequences of activity

visual memory

mental representations of stimuli as pictures

auditory memory (acoustic memory)

mental representations of stimuli as sounds

images

mental representations of visual information

heuristics

mental shortcuts or "rules of thumb"

mnemonic strategies

methods for organizing information in order to remember it

Arguments over what is "fair" occur because "fairness" is a ______ concept.

natural

chunking

organizing individual stimuli so that they will be perceived as larger units of meaningful information

Playing the piano uses ____ memory.

procedural

The tendency to remember the last few items in a list is called the _____ effect.

recency

Stimuli called __ help you recall information stored in long-term memory.

retrieval cues

recogntion

retrieving information stored in memory with the help of retrieval cues

recall

retrieving information stored in memory without much help from retrieval cues

Your _______ of "hotel room" would lead you to expect yours to include a bathroom.

schema

mental models

sets of propositions that represent people's understanding of how things look and work

If you looked up a phone number but forgot it before you could call it; the information was probably lost from ______ memory.

short-term

retrieval cues

stimuli that allow or help people to recall information

algorithms

systematic procedures that cannot fail to produce a correct solution to a problem

thinking

the manipulation of mental representations of information

immediate memory span

the maximum number of items a person can recall perfectly after one presentation of the items

reasoning

the process by which people generate and evaluate arguments and reach conclusions about them

informal reasoning

the process of evaluating a conclusion based on the evidence available to support it

retreival

the process of finding information stored in memory

selective attention

the process of focusing mental resources on only part of the stimulus field

selevtive attention

the process of focusing mental resources on only part of the stimulus field

storage

the process of maintaining information in memory system over time

encoding

the process of putting information into a form that the memory system can accept and use

intererence

the process through which storage or retrieval of information is impaired by the presence of other information

iconic memory

the sensory register for visual information

long-term memory (LTM)

the stage of memory that researchers believe has an unlimited capacity and unlimited duration to store new information

implicit memory

the unintentional and unconscious influence of prior experience on current behavior, thinking, or emotion

massed practice

trying to learn complex new information in a single long study period

anterograde amnesia

a loss of memory for events that occur after a brain injury

retrograde amnesia

a loss of memory for events that occurred prior to a brain injury

prototype

a member of a natural concept that possesses all or most of its characteristic features

maintenance rehearsal

a memorization method that involves repeating information over and over to keep it in memory

elaborative rehearsal

a memorization method that relates new information to information already stored in memory

cognitive map

a mental model of familiar parts of the environment

proposition

a mental representation that expresses a relationship between concepts

brown-peterson distractor technique

a method for determining how long unrehearsed information remains in short-term memory

relearning method

a method for measuring forgetting

information-processing model of memory

a model that suggests that information must pass through sensory memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory in order to become firmly embedded in memory

transfer-appropriate processing model of memory

a model that suggests that memory depends on how well the processes used to retrieve information match up with the processes that were used to encode it

levels-of-processing model of memory

a model that suggests that memory depends on the degree or depth to which we mentally process information

multiple memory systems model

a model that suggests the existence of specialized and separated memory systems in the brain

repressed memory

a painful memory that is said to be kept out of consciousness by psychological processes

encoding specificity principle

a principle stating that the ability of a cue to aid retrieval depends on how well it taps into information that was originally encoded

formal reasoning

a set of rigorous procedures for reaching valid conclusions

retroactive inhibition

a cause of forgetting whereby new information placed in memory interferes with the ability to recall information already in memory

proactive inhibition

a cause of forgetting whereby previously learned information interferes with the ability to remember new information

primary effect

a characteristic of memory in which recall is particularly good for the first few items in a list

recency effect

a characteristic of memory in which recall of the last few items in a list is particularly good

decay theory

a description of forgetting as the gradual disappearance of information from memory