Quiz 6: Chapter 7

Most undergraduate students have spent a large portion of their college careers typing on computer keyboards and can type with ease. However, if I provided you with a blank keyboard (without the letters labeled on it) and asked you to tell me which letter was on each key, you would struggle to complete this task. Why is that?

Because your ability to type using a keyboard relies on implicit memory.

Imagine you open a new credit card account. The customer service representative asks you for your mailing address, and you have no problem providing it (without having to look it up). This is an example of what kind of memory?

Explicit memory

A physician meets a new patient. This patient suffered a head injury in a bad car accident and she is unable to learn the doctor's name or remember what day it is. But she can still recall everything she learned before her car accident. It is most likely that this patient is experiencing retrograde amnesia.

False

Declarative memory includes several categories of memory including procedural memory.

False

Eyewitness testimony is typically very accurate because individuals are in a high-arousal state when they encoded the memories.

False

Implicit memory refers to knowledge that we can consciously recall.

False

State-dependent learning proves that learning is equal when you are intoxicated or not intoxicated, as long as the learning and testing occur under the same conditions.

False

Which of the following statements is true regarding the nature of interference affecting memory?

It is difficult to maintain multiple associations to the same item in memory.

Research concerning how interference affects memory has shown which of the following?

It is harder to learn new associations to an item that has previous existing associations, and it is harder to retain old associations to an item once a new association is learned.

Which of the following statements best describes the Power Law of Forgetting?

Memory loss is negatively accelerated as more time passes.

According to the Decay Theory of Forgetting:

Memory traces decay in strength over time.

Dr. Chapman knows how to drive her car. Her ability to remember how to operate her vehicle is an example of what kind of memory?

Non-declarative memory and procedural memory.

Which structures in the human brain are involved in the creation and storage of new memories?

Prefrontal regions and Hippocampal regions

Neuroscience studies have examined the brain's neural activation during false and true memories. Which of the following statements best describes the findings regarding these experiments?

The hippocampus shows the same activation level to true and false memories; the activation in this structure does not appear to discriminate between what the person experienced versus what they imagined.

Explicit memories are formed in the hippocampus, but implicit memories can be primed in cortical brain structures.

True

One possible concern with learning to scuba dive is that all of the classroom instruction you receive is conducted on land, whereas the test of the information you learned will take place in a different context (underwater).

True

Our ability to recall happy memories is better when we are in a happy mood than when we are in a sad mood.

True

The very famous amnesic patient, HM, could not form any new memories after his surgery for epilepsy. HM likely could not form new memories because his entire hippocampus had been removed.

True

You are more likely to be able to remember information if you can revisit the same emotional and physical state that you were in when you learned the information, which is referred to as state-dependent learning.

True

Recently, a large controversy emerged related to memories of child sexual abuse. There have been many cases in which individuals claim that they have recovered previously-supressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, typically recovered in therapy. Some researchers believe that these memories may not be true, and perhaps were introduced through suggestion from the therapist during their interviews. What is this called?

false-memory syndrome