Deck 9: Memory

Question 1

Memory, as a general construct, is best defined as

A) the ability to briefly retain information in the senses.
B) the long-term ability to recall events.
C) the ability to store and retrieve learned information.
D) the transfer of information between storage areas of the brain.

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Which example best captures the notion of sensory memory?

A) When you see a bright light and then close your eyes, you see white spots, or afterimages.
B) When you hear a sound, you immediately think of emotional events that you have experienced in the presence of similar sounds.
C) When you learn to ride a bike, your movements are coordinated by your cerebellum.
D) When you pay attention to the sound of your teacher's voice, you remember more of what she says.

Answer 2

A

Question 3

The brief impressions formed as a result of neural activity in and around sensory receptors are called _______ memories.

A) episodic
B) sensory
C) nondeclarative
D) perceptual

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Information stored in the sensory buffer is retained

A) for a few seconds.
B) for several minutes.
C) for a number of hours.
D) permanently.

Question 5

Some people claim to be able to recall whole images with exact detail, an ability called _______ memory.

A) working
B) nondeclarative
C) sensory
D) photographic

Question 6

George Sperling was able to differentiate between the amount of information that could be stored in sensory memory and the time until the memory faded by cuing participants to recall

A) an entire visual scene from memory.
B) a row of letters in a visual array.
C) the first letters of words in a visual array.
D) the second of three sentences in a visual array.

Question 7

Which statement is consistent with the conclusion from Sperling's study of sensory memory?

A) The duration of sensory memory is brief, lasting less than 300 milliseconds.
B) The capacity of sensory memory is limited to a single bit of a visual stimulus.
C) The quality of sensory memory is limited to undetailed sensory images.
D) The degree of relationship between sensory memory and cue duration is limited.

Question 8

Though some people use the term short-term memory to refer to memory for recent events, like weekend plans, psychologists use the term to refer to memory that is limited in

A) capacity, and to a duration of a few seconds.
B) scope, but unlimited in duration.
C) duration, but not capacity.
D) capacity, but not duration.

Question 9

Which scenario represents the concept of rehearsal?

A) You take pages of detailed notes during psychology lectures to help you study.
B) You keep repeating a new friend's phone number while looking for your phone.
C) You create a list of the things you have to accomplish before leaving for spring break.
D) You organize your room so it is easy to find your books when it is time to study.

Question 10

Early studies of short-term memory by Brown and Peterson showed that information in short-term memory vanishes in about 20 seconds unless you

A) practice cued recall.
B) make detailed notes in writing.
C) repeat the information to yourself.
D) associate each word with an image.

Question 11

Short-term memory is now discussed by psychologists in terms of a system that keeps memories available during performance. This is also known as _______ memory.

A) sensory
B) iconic
C) echoic
D) working

Question 12

Which memory involves what psychologists consider a long-term memory?

A) Sally remembers a new friend's phone number long enough to write it down.
B) As he leaves a concert, Juan is humming the band's final song.
C) Steve has become adept at alternating between talking and texting.
D) Anna likes to tell a story about the first time she saw her college roommate.

Question 13

One of the main reasons psychologists sometimes use nonsense syllables, rather than real words in studies of memory, is that

A) nonsense syllables are unlikely to be associated with someone's existing knowledge.
B) real words are not likely to elicit the type of recall psychologists are interested in.
C) nonsense syllables are more likely than real words to elicit recall of short-term memories.
D) nonsense syllables tap into the processes associated with sensory memory more effectively.

Question 14

One way to differentiate between long-term and short-term memory systems in research is to construct a serial position curve, or to plot the position of an item in a list along with

A) the percent of participants that recalled the item.
B) the time it took for participants to recall the item.
C) the speed and accuracy of participants' recall of the item.
D) the number of times a participant asked about the item.

Question 15

Jan's husband calls her while she is at the grocery store to ask her to pick up six varieties of chips for a party. He tells her the varieties he wants and hangs up, and she immediately starts grabbing the chips. Which varieties will she most likely remember?

A) She won't remember any of them.
B) She will remember a few varieties in no particular order.
C) She will remember the ones at the beginning of the list.
D) She will remember the ones at the end of the list.

Question 16

Jan's husband calls her while she is at the grocery store to ask her to pick up six varieties of chips for a party. He tells her the varieties he wants and hangs up. While walking to the chip aisle, she repeats the list to herself, then begins to pick up the chips. Which varieties will she most likely remember?

A) She won't remember any of them.
B) She will remember a few varieties in no particular order.
C) She will remember the ones at the beginning of the list.
D) She will remember the ones at the end of the list.

Question 17

In serial position studies, the recency effect vanishes if there is a long delay between the end of a list and the beginning of recall because _______ during the delay.

A) short-term memory decays
B) long-term memory decays
C) consolidation occurs
D) sensory memory decays

Question 18

In the process of forming memories, when perception ends, _______ begins.

A) encoding
B) storage
C) retrieval
D) consolidation

Question 19

Which situation best lends itself to memorization by encoding?

A) Learning the words of a song in an unfamiliar language
B) Learning the names of 22 students in your literature class
C) Remembering how to make a complicated dessert
D) Remembering how to get to the campus recreation facility

Question 20

Chunking information facilitates encoding because it

A) increases the amount of information to be encoded.
B) reduces the ability to tap into existing stores of information.
C) reduces the absolute number of items to be encoded.
D) increases the effort involved in encoding.

Question 21

Of the following four bits of information, which would be the easiest to chunk, and thus encode?

A) XJITAHEB
B) 29481039
C) 19481948
D) TUAJFKS

Question 22

Which example best represents memorization by hierarchy?

A) Learning the colors of the rainbow with "Roy G. Biv"
B) Remembering a list of unrelated words
C) Learning flower names by arranging the flowers by color
D) Remembering a shopping list by "placing" the items along your route

Question 23

Psychologists call the process by which encoded information is transferred from short-term to long-term memory

A) consolidation.
B) priming.
C) retrieval.
D) rehearsal.

Question 24

Which statement about the capacity of long-term memory is most accurate?

A) Humans have a limit of about one million long-term memories.
B) Human memory capacity is severely limited, evidenced by our tendency to forget as we age.
C) Human memory has a nearly limitless capacity that is difficult to quantify.
D) Humans have an unlimited capacity for verbal information but not for visual information.

Question 25

Kim Peek was described as a savant mainly because he was able to

A) remember all of the details of every book he had ever read.
B) play any song he had ever heard on the piano.
C) remember an entire visual scene and reproduce it on canvas.
D) provide the day of the week for any date in history.

Question 26

Which of the following describes the downside of savant-level memory ability?

A) Savants find it difficult to maintain close relationships.
B) Savants are often victims of brain damage or abnormality.
C) Savants' abilities fade over time.
D) Savants never reach the level of success that non-savants reach with practice.

Question 27

Memory researchers define forgetting as the

A) inability to retain information in working memory long enough to make use of it.
B) inability to retrieve information from long-term memory.
C) sharp loss of information after head trauma.
D) process by which information is lost in transit from short- to long-term memory.

Question 28

Many life events are difficult to retrieve because

A) the information is not available in the sensory buffer.
B) the information fades from memory.
C) the brain matures and misrepresents the information.
D) the information is consolidated once we learn to speak.

Question 29

Retrieval is the process of

A) consolidating memories into long-term units.
B) accessing information from long-term memory.
C) transferring information from short-term to long-term memory.
D) interfering with information stored in long-term memory.

Question 30

When you enter an old password to retrieve your email, rather than entering your new password, you are demonstrating _______ interference. On the other hand, not being able to recall your old phone number is an example of _______ interference.

A) retroactive; proactive
B) hyperactive; retroactive
C) hypoactive; hyperactive
D) proactive; retroactive

Question 31

Which situation describes proactive interference?

A) Robert forgot the PIN he uses to check his bank account balance.
B) LaToya went to the wrong classroom because she confused her Monday schedule with her Tuesday schedule.
C) Jill called her new boyfriend by her old boyfriend's name.
D) Celia forgot that she had lived in a different part of the city before moving to her current apartment.

Question 32

The processes of proactive and retroactive interference are examples of the idea that forgetting is really a matter of _______ information.

A) losing
B) failed retrieval of
C) poor encoding of
D) consolidating

Question 33

Research on memory consolidation and interference suggests that if you are studying for an exam, you should

A) get a good night's sleep to facilitate consolidation.
B) study through the night so the information is freshly consolidated.
C) engage in proactive interference to limit the intrusion of old memories.
D) study early in the day when you are feeling well rested.

Question 34

All of the following involve cued recall except:

A) An experimenter names ten kinds of animals and asks the subject to recall the ones that have feathers.
B) An experimenter tells a story about a photograph, then gives the picture to the subject and asks him to retell the story.
C) An experimenter tells the subject that a set of keys is hidden in the room, then sends the subject to find them.
D) An experimenter shows the subject five different shapes, each a different color, then takes them away and asks which shape was green.

Question 35

Writing down the names of all twentieth-century U.S. presidents from memory requires you to engage in

A) free recall.
B) cued recall.
C) priming.
D) spreading activation.

Question 36

The symptoms of a stroke can be recalled with the acronym FAST, which means you should examine the person's face, arms, speech, and attend to the element of time. This is an example of a(n) _______ task.

A) free-recall
B) cued-recall
C) priming
D) interference

Question 37

Which situation involves the concept of priming?

A) Bill studied his notes before taking an exam and subsequently passed.
B) Grace read an article about her favorite actor, and later, when choosing a movie, she unknowingly chose to watch a movie with that actor.
C) Javier needed to memorize a list of items to pick up at the grocery store, so he associated each item with something on his office desk.
D) Mary Ellen lost her keys and later retraced her steps until she found them.

Question 38

Priming is evidence for the idea that our memories are connected with one another, and that recalling one memory influences recall of another memory, a concept called

A) free recall.
B) free association.
C) word association.
D) spreading activation.

Question 39

Which pair of words would be most closely related in a semantic web?

A) Dog and wolf
B) Cat and puppy
C) Dog and dig
D) Cat and cut

Question 40

The notion of semantic webs emphasizes the fact that

A) memories influence each other, one-by-one, in sequential order.
B) most memories connect with several other memories.
C) several memories can interfere with other memories.
D) word meanings often correspond to the exact location of the word in the brain.

Question 41

Which scenario best captures the concept of context-dependent retrieval?

A) You perform better on a driving test when you are in the car in which you learned to drive.
B) You perform worse on an exam when you take it in the same room in which you learned the material.
C) You perform well in a trivia game because winning money motivates you.
D) You perform poorly on a writing assignment because you have been under a lot of stress.

Question 42

When psychologists use the term memory trace, they are referring to the

A) physical record of a memory in the brain.
B) changing of the memory via interference.
C) semantic web relations between the memory and the brain.
D) sense that we can almost say the word for which we are searching.

Question 43

The susceptibility of our memories to include false details that fit in with real details of an event is called the

A) priming effect.
B) interference effect.
C) tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.
D) misinformation effect.

Question 44

If one group of people is asked if they "saw the broken headlight," and a second group asked if they "saw a broken headlight," the first group is more likely to

A) say no.
B) say yes.
C) say they don't remember.
D) lie.

Question 45

Many people report vivid recollections of high-impact events such as the Kennedy assassination, the September 11, 2001, attacks, and the 2012 Newtown school shooting. These memories are referred to as

A) echoic memories.
B) sensory memories.
C) flashbulb memories.
D) memory traces.

Question 46

The results of experiments in which participants viewed ambiguous figures with verbal labels, then drew the figures from memory, showed that

A) people are particularly sensitive to suggestion in the process of encoding.
B) people are not particularly sensitive to information presented during encoding.
C) visual images are recalled separately from the verbal labels applied to them.
D) verbal labels have no effect on how we encode and retrieve visual images.

Question 47

You associate each line of a poem that you need to memorize with a particular object in your dorm room. This is an example of aiding your memory via

A) storage procedures.
B) mnemonic devices.
C) confabulation methods.
D) retrieval procedures.

Question 48

According to memory researchers, the best way to prepare for an exam is to

A) reread all of your notes the morning of the exam.
B) repeatedly test yourself on information that will be on the exam.
C) associate each term you have to learn with an item in the exam room.
D) divide each chapter into parts you can skip and parts you need to learn.

Question 49

If Tuan wanted to use the method of loci to help him remember a list of items to get at the grocery story, he should

A) associate each of the words with rhyming words.
B) associate each word on the grocery list with a word in his vocabulary.
C) associate each item on the grocery list with a physical location in his house.
D) think of a word that can be spelled with the first letters of each item on the grocery list.

Question 50

Richie needs to buy bananas, apricots, and milk. Which demonstrates the use of an acronym to remember the items on his list?

A) Repeating the items as he walks to the store and as he retrieves the items
B) Using the word BAM to remind him of the first letter of each item
C) Imagining slipping on a banana peel as he gets out of bed, kicking an apricot into his closet, then finding milk spilled on the windowsill
D) Writing the names of the items in alphabetical order

Question 51

Which mnemonic device involves mentally placing items in an imaginary room or space?

A) Rhyming method
B) Acronyms
C) Method of loci
D) Peg-word method

Question 52

The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon describes the experience of believing that you

A) have experienced something when you actually have not.
B) know something but cannot quite articulate it.
C) heard someone say something when you actually did not.
D) know how to do something even if you have forgotten.

Question 53

Ashley was telling her friend about a movie she saw last night when she realized she could not remember the lead actor's name. She could only remember that it began with a B. This is an example of

A) the misinformation effect.
B) proactive interference.
C) confabulation.
D) the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

Question 54

Imagine that you were in a car accident in which you hit your head on the steering wheel. The next day you could not remember anything that had occurred in the week before the accident. You were suffering from

A) anterograde amnesia.
B) proactive interference.
C) retrograde amnesia.
D) Korsakoff's syndrome.

Question 55

Retrograde amnesia involves a loss of the ability to

A) retrieve old memories.
B) form new long-term memories.
C) form new short-term memories.
D) perform procedural tasks.

Question 56

Patient H.M., whose hippocampi and medial temporal lobes were removed, suffered from

A) anterograde amnesia.
B) Ebbinghaus syndrome.
C) retrograde amnesia.
D) Korsakoff's syndrome.

Question 57

Imagine that you know someone who developed a tumor that affected his or her ability to form new long-term memories. Though many parts of the brain are involved with memory, the part of the brain most likely affected by the tumor is the

A) thalamus.
B) hypothalamus.
C) basal ganglia.
D) hippocampus.

Question 58

The part of the brain that runs from the cerebellum to the temporal lobes and is very important for learning and memory is called the

A) thalamus.
B) hypothalamus.
C) basal ganglia.
D) hippocampus.

Question 59

The surgery that H.M. underwent impaired his _______ memory but left his _______ memory largely intact, meaning he could still learn to perform procedural tasks like mirror drawing.

A) implicit; explicit
B) declarative; nondeclarative
C) nondeclarative; declarative
D) semantic; episodic

Question 60

An important distinction between declarative and nondeclarative memory is that only declarative memories can be

A) described using words.
B) demonstrated with behavior.
C) attributed to procedural cognition.
D) intact following damage to the brain.

Question 61

Which of the following involves declarative memory?

A) You remember how to drive, even though you haven't driven in years.
B) You explain to your instructor why you could not finish your paper on time.
C) You describe a particularly bad blind date to your housemate.
D) You see an old friend at the movies, but you cannot remember his name.

Question 62

Our memory for carrying out motor and perceptual procedures is referred to as _______ memory.

A) nondeclarative
B) semantic
C) episodic
D) declarative

Question 63

Imagine you are caring for a patient who in the past abused alcohol. You find that the patient's memory is heavily impaired. It is very likely that that the patient has

A) Korsakoff's syndrome.
B) spreading activation.
C) context-dependent retrieval.
D) proactive interference.

Question 64

People suffering from Korsakoff's syndrome often fill gaps in their memories with seemingly true information that in fact is not accurate. This behavior is called

A) retrograde amnesia.
B) anterograde amnesia.
C) consolidation.
D) confabulation

Question 65

Due to a lack of thiamine, people with Korsakoff's syndrome develop cell loss in the

A) hippocampus.
B) basal ganglia.
C) mammillary bodies.
D) pons.

Question 66

Which statement describes information likely stored in episodic memory?

A) Paul remembers that all sides of an equilateral triangle are the same length.
B) Brenda knows that the colors of the rainbow can be remembered with "Roy G. Biv."
C) George recalls the first time he saw his girlfriend.
D) Mimi remembers the time of day she was born.

Question 67

Episodic memory describes memory for

A) facts and general knowledge.
B) events and autobiographical knowledge.
C) implicit, nondeclarative knowledge.
D) associations learned by conditioning.

Question 68

Patient K.C. is notable in psychological history because his case illustrates the difference between _______ and _______ memory.

A) semantic; episodic
B) declarative; nondeclarative
C) implicit; procedural
D) explicit; implicit

Question 69

Our knowledge of facts, such as the year that President Kennedy was shot or the fact that Paris is a city in France, is collectively called _______ memory.

A) episodic
B) working
C) semantic
D) implicit

Question 70

Which statement describes information likely stored in semantic memory?

A) Bob clearly recalls many details about his first day of college.
B) Crystal has a detailed memory for people's faces.
C) Pierre is well known for his ability to reproduce unusual sounds.
D) Juan knows all of the words to Canada's national anthem.

Question 71

Which situation most likely involves retrograde amnesia?

A) Brent woke up one night in a rage and found he could not remember details about his activities on the previous day for more than a few moments.
B) Manuel oscillates between remembering details of his life and not being able to remember them.
C) Ever since she was a young girl, Colleen felt like demons were inside her head compelling her to remember disturbing things about her past.
D) Following Greg's surgery to remove a benign brain tumor he could not recall most of what had happened to him during the year before his surgery.

Question 72

Nondeclarative memories for associations between stimuli are formed in part via the process of

A) engram implantation.
B) memory tracing.
C) conditioning.
D) procedural learning.

Question 73

Which task is an example of nondeclarative skill learning?

A) Justine learns the vocabulary for her psychology exam by repeating the definitions out loud.
B) Rhonda improves her speed in assembling toys in the factory after 100 hours of work.
C) Sophie memorizes the lines she need to know for a play by associating them with different locations in the theatre.
D) Sue jumps every time she hears a ringtone that sounds like her alarm clock.

Question 74

Another name for the physical memory trace in the brain is the

A) engram.
B) semantic web.
C) hippocampus.
D) medial temporal lobe.

Question 75

A synapse in the brain whose strength depends on how likely it is to cause the postsynaptic cell to fire is called a _______ synapse.

A) hippocampal
B) long-term
C) Hebbian
D) priming

Question 76

Long-term potentiation is the term neuroscientists use to describe long-lasting enhancement of

A) the primacy effect.
B) synaptic transmission.
C) synaptic inhibition.
D) mnemonic potential.

Question 77

Neuroscientists developed the non-matching-to-sample task in order to test whether

A) brain lesions affected declarative memory.
B) procedural learning was affected by declarative memory.
C) cerebellar lesions affected procedural memory.
D) frontal or temporal lesions affected implicit memory.

Question 78

The non-matching-to-sample task involves an animal demonstrating that it knows

A) the meaning of a new stimulus.
B) the location of food in a maze.
C) how to pick up food.
D) how to examine the visual environment.

Question 79

Failure of animals to perform well on the non-matching-to-sample task resulted from a combination of lesions to the hippocampus and the _______ lobes.

A) medial temporal
B) frontal
C) dorsal parietal
D) occipital

Question 80

Your teacher asks you to recite the terms you need to know for the exam because she knows that _______ aids the transfer of information from short-term to long-term memory.