Chapter 4: Student Review Questions
1. Experiments by Shepard (1967) and Standing (1973) have led many cognitive psychologists to conclude that our memory is best for ______.
a. pictures
b. words
c. nonsense syllables
d. numbers
2. According to the Shepard (1967) study, which types of words are best RECOGNIZED?
a. High-frequency words
b. Low-frequency words
c. Abstract words
d. Concrete words
3. A study that tests people's memory for actual events (or material) from their lives, which is not based on artificial stimuli and conducted in a laboratory, would be said to have high ______, because it sheds light on how memory is used naturally.
a. reliability
b. picture superiority
c. ecological validity
d. forgetting
e. schematic value
4. Which is the best example of a memory "sin of omission?"
a. Sara lists her Tuesday/Thursday classes, but she mistakenly says "Cognitive Psychology" (a MWF class) instead of her Abnormal Psych. class.
b. Ted shows up to a surprise birthday party a week early, instead of the correct day.
c. Ortiz tells a joke he heard at lunch, and credits Mary with the joke (instead of correctly saying Kimberly told him).
d. Jacqueline describes an outfit she saw in a magazine, but neglects to mention the wide collar on the jacket in the picture.
5. Researchers who study very long-term memory, such as Bahrick et al. (1975; Bahrick, 1984) and Conway et al., have found that the sharpest decline in memory occurs in the several years after one has learned information. Whatever information remains is then said to be in a(n) ______, and is retained for a long period of time.
a. false memory
b. forgetting
c. permastore
d. reverberation
6. Bahrick claimed that one reason people recognize the names and faces of their high school classmates for up to 48 years is that they "learned" those names and faces at intervals over a 3- or 4-year period. Thus, he credits ______as having led to their strong memories.
a. permastore
b. levels of processing
c. distributed practice
d. attenuation of attention
7. Jayden takes 2 years of Russian language classes, then switches over to studying Hungarian. During a test in Hungarian 101, he can remember only the Russian word for “building.” This is an example of:
a. retroactive interference.
b. proactive interference.
c. decay.
d. the misinformation effect.
8. In experiments of directed forgetting, people are given information (e.g., a list of words) and then told to “forget” some of the information. Which of the following statements best characterizes the research findings?
a. Directed forgetting is effective, as people are unable to remember the “forgotten” material under any circumstances.
b. People do remember the “forgotten” information, but have simply inhibited its retrieval.
c. People cannot intentionally “forget” information; they show roughly equivalent memory for items they are supposed to remember AND for the items they were told to “forget.”
d. People still store information they were told to intentionally “forget,” but don’t recall that information during the memory test to help out the experimenter.
9. A number of real-life events and experimental studies have confirmed that people are susceptible to false or misleading information that was planted there by another eyewitness, a police officer or lawyer, a therapist, or by the experimenter. Imagine a person in an experiment who hears Fact A, then reads Fact B (which contradicts Fact A) in a passage written by the experimenter. If the person gives Fact B as the correct answer in a later memory test (even though he actually remembers Fact A was correct), which theory of False Memory best explains the person's erroneous memory performance?
a. Memory Impairment
b. Misinformation Acceptance
c. Misinformation Interference
d. Failure to encode the relevant detail in the first place
10. The “Now Print” theory claims that Flashbulb Memories are due to which of the following mechanisms?
a. We have a “schema” for national disasters that enables us to fill in details that may be missing from our memories for the event.
b. Increased arousal of the limbic system due to the emotional nature of the event
c. Increased rehearsal of, and exposure to, information surrounding national tragedies d. Shocking events are distinctive because of how rare they are, and thus easier to retrieve than more common memories.