Deck 10: Remembering and Forgetting

Question 1

Scarborough (1972) could not draw any conclusions about differential forgetting in his auditory and visual presentation conditions because

A) performance in the auditory and visual presentation conditions was equivalent across all retention intervals.
B) performance was virtually perfect in all conditions at the zero retention interval.
C) performance was poorer in the auditory than in the visual presentation condition at the longer retention intervals.
D) performance was poorer in the visual than in the auditory presentation condition at the longer retention intervals.

Answer 1

performance was virtually perfect in all conditions at the zero retention interval.

Question 2

The use of nonsense syllables was not a perfect solution to the problems Ebbinghaus hoped to avoid by their use because

A) nonsense syllables are hard to learn.
B) he was the only subject in his experiments.
C) meaning may be attached to nonsense syllables.
D) none of these

Answer 2

meaning may be attached to nonsense syllables.

Question 3

Which of the following is NOT true?

A) There is a clear-cut distinction between recall and recognition.
B) Forced choice tests are preferred to yes/no tests because correcting for guessing is less of a problem with the forced choice procedure.
C) The number of errors made on a memory test is frequently used as a dependent variable in memory experiments.
D) Scale attenuation effects can be a problem in research on memory.

Answer 3

There is a clear-cut distinction between recall and recognition.

Question 4

Multiple choice tests are similar to _______tests, and essay tests are similar to _______ tests.

A) yes/no recognition; free recall
B) forced choice recognition; serial recall
C) forced choice recognition; free recall
D) yes/no recognition; serial recall

Question 5

Remembering information for several seconds involves _______ memory.

A) implicit
B) short-term
C) intermediate
D) long-term

Question 6

Which of the following statements best summarizes the problem of scale attenuation effects?

A) There is no such thing as perfectly good or perfectly bad performance.
B) The size of the intervals of a dependent measure are unequal when you approach the extreme ends of the scale.
C) It is impossible to determine whether there are differences among experimental conditions when performance is polarized at either the high or low end of the scale of the dependent measure.
D) Most of the dependent measures used to study memory are relatively unconstrained and thus allow for easy interpretation of performance levels.

Question 7

Ebbinghaus found that when he attempted to relearn a list that he had learned once before,

A) he relearned the list faster the second time.
B) he showed no savings.
C) he needed more trials to reach criterion.
D) it took the same amount of time to learn as it did the first time.

Question 8

Which of the following is an instance of proactive interference?

A) You learned French in high school and now you confuse French words with new words you are learning in your Spanish class.
B) You find that after completing a computer programming course in C++ this semester, you cannot remember the Visual Basic commands that you learned last year.
C) You have trouble recalling the names of your grade school classmates.
D) You find that the course you took in Western Civilization last semester is helping you understand the work that you are reading for your Comparative Literature course this semester.

Question 9

Scale-attenuation effects refer to

A) modality effects.
B) ceiling and floor effects.
C) retroactive and proactive interference effects.
D) levels of processing effects

Question 10

Why did Ebbinghaus consider it important to use nonsense syllables in his memory experiments?

A) He did not think that CVCs would be difficult to learn.
B) He wanted to reduce the likelihood that linguistic associations could be formed among the stimuli.
C) He wanted to minimize savings in learning stimulus lists for the second time.
D) He was studying retroactive interference.

Question 11

In a yes/no recognition test for a list of words, the dependent variable measure would NOT be

A) the number of words recognized correctly.
B) the number of new words mistaken for words on the list learned.
C) the proportion of words on the list recognized during the test.
D) the number of words from the list that can be listed in the correct order.

Question 12

_________ memory refers to the influence of past learning without conscious effort to retrieve that information from the past.

A) Explicit
B) Implicit
C) Episodic
D) Long-term

Question 13

A memory test in which participants recall items in any order they choose is called a

A) yes/no recall test.
B) paired associate recall test.
C) free recall test.
D) serial recall test.

Question 14

On an implicit word fragment completion test, 47 percent of the fragments in the studied condition were completed and 23 percent of fragments in the non-studied condition were completed. The amount of priming is _______ percent.

A) 24
B) 70
C) 23
D) 47

Question 15

Ebbinghaus measured forgetting as a function of retention interval and found that

A) forgetting is very slow at first but then speeds up.
B) forgetting is rapid at first and the levels off.
C) the amount of forgetting decreases steadily with retention interval.
D) the amount of forgetting remains constant across all retention intervals.

Question 16

The conscious recollection of events in one's life relies on ________ memory.

A) procedural
B) implicit
C) short term
D) explicit

Question 17

The Brown-Peterson procedure is used to investigate _________ memory.

A) iconic
B) short-term
C) long-term
D) implicit

Question 18

Answering questions about the movie you saw last night would involve _______ memory.

A) long-term
B) implicit
C) short-term
D) explicit

Question 19

In the levels of processing framework, __________ processing involves the lowest level of analysis.

A) graphemic
B) phonemic
C) semantic
D) syntactic

Question 20

One CANNOT reduce problems of ceiling and floor effects by

A) avoiding the use of tasks that are too easy.
B) avoiding the use of tasks that are too difficult.
C) testing pilot participants to make sure that performance on a task will not be near the extremes of the scale.
D) making sure that pilot participants get nearly perfect scores when they are not being subjected to the experimental manipulation.

Question 21

An experimental psychologist wants to study the effects of depth of processing controlling for the effects of other study strategies that the participants might use spontaneously if they know they are going to be tested on their memory. To do this, the experimenter tells the participants that they are going to be participating in a reaction time test to see how quickly they can make different kinds of judgments about each of a series of words that will be presented to them, and they are not told that they will be tested for memory of the words. These instructions to the subjects are called

A) a pilot test.
B) an orienting task.
C) intentional learning instructions.
D) priming.

Question 22

In a free recall test, people are required to recall information in the order it was presented but in serial recall the order of recall is irrelevant.

Question 23

The levels of processing theory of memory has been criticized as being untestable because

A) there is no independent way of measuring depth of processing except for performance on a memory test.
B) the results of the experiments using college students have not generalized to subjects of different ages.
C) the effect of depth of processing on memory is very weak.
D) depth of processing can be measured only using incidental learning.

Question 24

Ebbinghaus used nonsense syllables as stimuli in his memory experiments to minimize trials to criterion and maximize savings.

Question 25

Which of the following early researchers is credited with inventing the method of paired associates?

A) William James
B) Hermann Ebbinghaus
C) Mary Calkins
D) Endel Tulving

Question 26

In line with the levels of processing theory, Craik and Tulving (1975) found that recognition performance was best in the ______ condition, worst in the ______ condition, and intermediate in the ______ condition.

A) semantic; graphemic; phonemic
B) graphemic; phonemic; semantic
C) semantic; phonemic; graphemic
D) phonemic; graphemic; semantic

Question 27

Ebbinghaus completed pioneering experiments on

A) animal learning.
B) human physiology.
C) human problem solving.
D) human learning and memory.

Question 28

In psychological research, scale attenuation refers to situations in which

A) a particular result will not generalize across several dimensions.
B) a measurement scale is too restricted to measure differences between conditions.
C) performance in two conditions is equivalent.
D) an independent variable has an effect that is the same at all levels of the second independent variable.

Question 29

Patients with a specific form of amnesia have been found to have poor explicit memory for newly presented material compared to a matched control group of participants with no memory disorders, but show implicit memory for the material that is comparable to that of the control group. Based on this finding, which of the following would be expected?

A) The patients will do as well as the control group on a test of free recall.
B) The patients will do better than the control group on a yes/no recognition test.
C) The patients will do as well as the control group on a word stem completion test.
D) The patients will do worse than the control group on a word stem completion test.

Question 30

Which of the following is an example of a multifactor experiment?

A) Performance on a list-learning task is compared for male and female participants.
B) Recall performance is measured for a 10 item list versus a 50 item list.
C) Amount of forgetting for a word list is measured as a function of number of presentations and word length.
D) Percent recall is compared between a group who studies a list for 20 minutes and a group who studies for only 10 minutes.

Question 31

Why are the results of Ebbinghaus's research still considered valid?

A) He was the only subject in his experiments.
B) His findings have been replicated many times.
C) People sometimes find meaning in nonsense syllables.
D) He believed that higher mental processes could be studied using the experimental method.

Question 32

Ebbinghaus' savings measure revealed that information can be learned more quickly if it has been learned on a previous occasion.

Question 33

When a researcher finds that the same instructions to the participants in a memory experiment have different effects on their memory depending on how they are tested,

A) there is a main effect for type of test.
B) there is a main effect for instructions given to the participants.
C) there is an interaction between instructions and type of test.
D) there is no effect of instructions.

Question 34

In order to avoid scale attenuation effects, a memory test should be constructed in which

A) pilot subjects score near the top of the scale when there is no experimental manipulation so that negative effects on scores can be observed.
B) pilot subjects score near the bottom of the scale when there is no experimental manipulation so that positive effects on scores can be observed.
C) pilot subjects score near the middle range of the scale when there is no experimental manipulation so that any effect on scores, whether positive or negative, can be observed.
D) pilot subjects are not aware of the experimental manipulation.

Question 35

In the paired-associate method,

A) participants memorize a list of nonsense syllables and must recall them in the same order as they appeared on the list.
B) participants must memorize a list of words and then recall them in whatever order they can.
C) participants are asked to generate a list of words associated with a word presented to them by the experimenter.
D) participants learn pairs of words (e.g., light - car) and are later asked to recall the second word of each pair (e.g., car) after being presented with the first word of the pair (e.g., light).

Question 36

According to the levels of processing approach to memory, deeper levels of processing during study leads to worse memory for the experience.

Question 37

Ebbinghaus used savings as a dependent variable in his experiments because the number of trials to criterion was constant.

Question 38

Explicit measures of memory include such tests as

A) the savings method.
B) priming measures.
C) word fragment completion tasks .
D) serial recall.

Question 39

According to Jenkin's (1979) tetrahedral model of memory experiments, researchers make choices along _______ dimensions.

A) two
B) four
C) five
D) eight

Question 40

Based on Scarborough's (1972) results we can conclude that forgetting is greater for auditory than for visual presentation.

Question 41

Ebbinghaus used the savings score to indicate memory retention for a list of previously learned nonsense syllables.

Question 42

Psychologists do not need to concern themselves with the issue of generality of results as much as scientists in other disciplines.

Question 43

An interaction between two variables can be caused by scale attenuation effects.

Question 44

In a list-learning experiment, one measure may be the number of study trials needed to reach some criterion of performance.

Question 45

Explicit memory and episodic memory are quite similar concepts.

Question 46

The trials to criterion measure of memory is still widely used today.

Question 47

The finding that pictures produce more priming than words on a word fragment completion test is known as the picture superiority effect.

Question 48

An interaction is observed when the effect of one variable changes at different levels of a second variable.

Question 49

The item "TAC" is a CVC syllable.

Question 50

Performance on explicit memory tasks does not require recollection of past events.

Question 51

Proactive interference occurs when previously learned information interferes with recall for more recently learned information.

Question 52

One of the advantages of multifactor experiments is that interactions cannot be produced by scale attenuation.

Question 53

Weldon and Roediger found that words are better remembered than pictures on a free recall test, but pictures produce more priming than do words on a word fragment completion test.

Question 54

The Brown-Peterson technique is an example of an implicit memory test.

Question 55

Ebbinghaus coined the term "implicit memory."

Question 56

Variables that affect performance one way on an explicit task may have a completely different effect on an implicit task.

Question 57

In a line graph, parallel lines indicate a main effect and an interaction.

Question 58

There is no way to avoid ceiling and floor effects in memory research; we just have to learn to interpret them carefully.

Question 59

Autobiographical memories are not error prone.

Question 60

Amnesics show impaired performance on free recall tests but not on recognition tests compared to normal control participants.

Question 61

Describe the main ideas of Craik and Lockhart's (1972) levels of processing approach to memory. Outline an experiment that provided support for the levels of processing approach.

Question 62

Distinguish between explicit and implicit memory, and between short-term and long-term memory. Describe a task used by experimental psychologists to investigate each type of memory.

Question 63

Describe three experimental findings that showed a dissociation between explicit and implicit memory tests.

Question 64

Signal-detection theory has been used to assess memory performance.

Question 65

Forced-choice recognition tests are multiple-choice tests.

Question 66

Discuss advantages and disadvantages of using multifactor designs.

Question 67

What is meant by a scale attenuation effect? Explain why the occurrence of a scale attenuation effect makes the results of an experiment difficult to interpret.

Question 68

In an experiment, a group of participants with amnesia and a group of control participants studied a list of words and an hour later were given a free recall test and a word fragment completion test. The results, in Percent correct, were as follows:
Controls Amnesic Patients
Free Recall: 65% 25%
Word Fragment Completion
Studied Words: 75% 65%
Non-Studied Words: 25% 15%

Question 69

(1) Identify the independent and dependent variables.
(2) Calculate the priming scores.
(3) Graph the results in a bar and a line graph (include priming).
(4) Label all the important parts of the graphs.
(5) Are there main effects and an interaction? Is so, what kind?
(6) Briefly interpret these results.
Discuss the following statement, providing specific examples: The term memory is broad and includes many types of memories.

Question 70

If you were to study the effects of a particular independent variable on memory, but you suspect that, if there is an effect, the effect size will be very small, what method of testing memory would you choose? Why?

Question 71

The terms "implicit memory" and episodic memory" mean the same thing.

Question 72

In paired associate learning, pairs of unrelated items are presented together during a study phase.

Question 73

Describe the Brown-Peterson short-term memory procedure used in Scarborough's (1972) experiment. Describe the results of this experiment.

Question 74

Describe Jenkins' (1979) tetrahedral model of memory experiments. Provide examples from experiments in the text.

Question 75

By studying the way that implicit and explicit memory tests interact with other variables, psychologists are gaining a better understanding of both normal and abnormal function. Present an argument in favor of this statement by describing research reported in the text.