Exam 7: A: Memory

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Answers will vary but should contain the following information for full credit.
--Our memory system is highly adaptive and seeks out information that is most vivid and important and seeks to understand the gist of the information by going beyond what occurred and assigning some meaning and coherence to the events.
--Because of this,we will lose certain information (via encoding failures)and will attempt to fill in the gaps of information based on our prior expectations (bias,schemas,misinformation,source monitoring errors,suggestibility,and misattribution).Because of this process,our memory is a combination of fact and fiction.

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Answers will vary.A full-credit answer should mention at least two of the following points.
--Research examining the phenomenon of flashbulb memories has shown that people's initial and later recollections of events often differ dramatically.This should serve as a caution against automatically accepting them as evidence,and it challenges the conventional belief that certain memories are impervious to forgetting or other memory errors.
--Post-event information,such as questions asked by the police,may become part of one's memory for the event.Therefore,what one recalls and what one actually saw are two different events.People can be led astray in their recall of information by suggestive questioning.Researchers have documented several instances of false implanted memories that seemed to be plausible memories to the person.
--Research involving people who were exonerated by DNA evidence points to errors in eyewitness identification as one important factor in the individual's being found guilty of a crime.Juries often believe eyewitness identification and are unaware that eyewitness confidence is,at best,a weak indicator of eyewitness accuracy.
--Eyewitness testimony can be far from accurate when optimal conditions aren't met,which include errors introduced through a variety of factors such as communication with other witnesses,different race victims and perpetrators,brief glimpses,viewing crime under stressful conditions,mistaken sightings,weapon focus,etc.

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Answers will vary.A full-credit answer should discuss how information about the learning environment is encoded along with the information about facts learned during class lecture/discussion and also mention information that the authors covered in the chapter reading (students do better on exams in same classroom where they learned the material).
--Researchers have noted that people tend to recall information better when the conditions associated with the original learning context are also present at the later retrieval context.It seems that this external,or incidental,information serves as retrieval cues that assist in the recall of information.One such context-dependent cue may be the student's location in the classroom.While it is the source of continued debate,some researchers have documented that students perform better when they are tested in the same classroom as opposed to a different classroom.The same may then be true of the location of their seat or being surrounded by the same persons on exam day as on lecture,or discussion,days.
--Research has documented that persons who were asked to learn information either standing on a beach or submerged in 15 feet of water tended to have significantly better recall when tested in similar conditions at a later time versus being tested in a different environment.By moving the student from the back of the room,the student is placed in a different context.Because the location of others and the location of one's self within the room may provide explicit or implicit retrieval cues that assist the student in attempting to recall information for the exam,we respectfully ask that all of you,as faculty,refrain from shuffling student seating arrangements and locations within the classroom and thereby removing an important retrieval cue from your students.