Question 1

A physics teacher asks her students to draw a picture to illustrate the forces at work when someone throws a ball into the air. This strategy should do two things to help students remember the forces involved. In particular, it should encourage students to engage in both:

Accepted Answer

A)   implicit and explicit understanding
B)   rote learning and automaticity
C)   enactment and visual imagery
D)   verbalization and facilitative expectations C

Question 2

Generally speaking, elaboration helps students learn new information. An exception to this rule is when students elaborate on this information:

Accepted Answer

A)   After having already organized it in a hierarchical fashion
B)   Using previously stored erroneous information
C)   Using information they stored many years earlier
D)   Very quickly B

Question 3

Which one of the following is least likely to be a good predictor of how well a person will remember a piece of information a year or two after learning it?

Accepted Answer

A)   The speed with which the person learned it in the first place
B)   The extent to which the person related it to other information in his or her long-term memory
C)   The extent to which the person tried to apply the information to new situations
D)   The frequency with which the person subsequently reviewed the information A

Question 4

Three of the following teachers are using strategies that should help students effectively learn and remember information. Which one is not necessarily promoting effective cognitive processing?

Accepted Answer

A)   Mr. Ayotte helps students identify important ideas in their textbooks.
B)   Ms. Bertinelli has students repeat definitions of new vocabulary words out loud.
C)   Mr. Canton explains the rationale underlying a complex problem-solving procedure.
D)   Ms. Darwin talks about how famous battles in history are in some ways similar to the fights students sometimes have on the playground.

Question 5

Which one of the following students is definitely demonstrating automaticity in word recognition?

Accepted Answer

A)   When Samantha reads aloud, her voice lacks expression.
B)   When Roland reads, he has to sound out most of the words.
C)   When Kristen reads, she recognizes words by sight and recalls their meanings instantaneously.
D)   When Werner listens to someone say a new word, he closes his eyes and tries to imagine how it might be spelled.

Question 6

A teacher tells his class, "For tomorrow's class, read pages 23 to 49 in your geography book." Three of the following students are demonstrating the process of construction in their perceptions of what their teacher has said. Which student is not?

Accepted Answer

A)   Anthony doesn't hear what the teacher says because his mind is on something else.
B)   Bonita thinks the teacher is saying "history book."
C)   Christopher "hears" the teacher say "pages 33 to 39" because the student next to him is coughing loudly.
D)   Dena understands the teacher even though the teacher speaks with a slight accent and mispronounces the word geography.

Question 7

William is shopping at a convenience store when a man rushes in, shoots the store clerk in the arm, hurriedly cleans out the cash register, and then speeds away in a pickup truck. Later, a detective asks William to describe the woman who was waiting for the thief in the truck. The fact is, William didn't see a woman in the truck, but after the detective urges him to "think hard and try to remember her," he begins to recall seeing a blonde woman sitting in the passenger side of the truck. This situation illustrates:

Accepted Answer

A)   the misinformation effect
B)   a retrieval cue
C)   spreading activation
D)   encoding specificity

Question 8

What device did Benjamin Franklin invent to help people read better? It may take you a long time to think of the answer-bifocal lenses-because Ben was responsible for so many other inventions as well. In this situation, your lengthy retrieval time can best be explained in terms of:

Accepted Answer

A)   too many retrieval cues
B)   construction errors
C)   the fan effect
D)   repression

Question 9

Which one of the following is the best example of controlled processing?

Accepted Answer

A)   A child sitting in the back seat of a car
B)   A teenager learning to drive
C)   A bus driver driving slowly down the street
D)   An adult driving over the speed limit down the street

Question 10

Morris is taking an introductory Russian course. In the early weeks of the course, he studies new Russian vocabulary words 10 times each, all in the same evening. Later on, he discovers that he can remember Russian words better over the long run if he studies them twice in an evening for five evenings in a row. Morris has discovered:

Accepted Answer

A)   the spacing effect
B)   the generation effect
C)   the importance of consolidation
D)   the advantages of implicit learning

Question 11

Albert grew up in Germany but now lives in England. He recalls more about his childhood in Germany when he's speaking in German than when he's speaking in English. Which one of the following concepts best explains this fact?

Accepted Answer

A)   flashbulb memory
B)   encoding specificity
C)   spreading activation
D)   fan effect

Question 12

Maria moved to this country several months ago. She has been studying English as a second language but still has much to learn about the language of her new homeland. One day her teacher tells the class, "Bring an empty coffee can to school tomorrow for a project we're going to do." Maria hears only two familiar words-"coffee" and "school"-and guesses that her teacher is saying that students should not drink coffee at school. Maria's misinterpretation illustrates which one of the following?

Accepted Answer

A)   Conceptual change
B)   Auditory imagery
C)   Construction in retrieval
D)   Construction in storage

Question 13

Ms. Trinh is about to start a unit on sharks. Some of her students have a strong interest in sharks and know a lot about them. Others know very little about sharks. When Ms. Trinh gives a reading assignment about sharks, she should expect that:

Accepted Answer

A)   Students with more background knowledge will understand the reading material more readily than their classmates.
B)   Students' reading comprehension will depend almost entirely on their word decoding skills; their prior knowledge won't make much of a difference.
C)   Students with more background knowledge are less likely to double-check their understanding and so will make more comprehension errors.
D)   Students with less background knowledge may be reluctant to read about an unfamiliar topic; thus, motivating them to learn during the unit will be a challenge.

Question 14

When Gianna returns to college after a summer touring France, she tells her roommate about her many experiences. She does not always remember them accurately, however, so she fills in the gaps in her memory with logical details about how things "must" have happened. Several weeks later, she is telling another friend about her trip. Gianna will probably:

Accepted Answer

A)   Remember her experiences more accurately than she had previously
B)   Feel very confused about what things actually did and did not happen in France
C)   Have different gaps in her memory than she did when talking to her roommate, and so construct very different recollections of her experiences in France
D)   Remember her experiences in France as occurring in essentially the way that she previously described them to her roommate

Question 15

According to the textbook, we will form a connection between a new piece of information and something we already know only if:

Accepted Answer

A)   The connection between them is readily apparent.
B)   Both things are in working memory at the same time.
C)   The two things are encoded in the same way i.e., as eidetic images, productions, or propositions) .
D)   The two things were learned in the same environmental context.

Question 16

Mr. Gaydos wants to teach a group of people how to perform the Heimlich maneuver. Three of the following strategies should help his students learn the maneuver more effectively. Given what we know about teaching procedural knowledge, which strategy is least likely to be effective in helping students learn the procedure correctly?

Accepted Answer

A)   Mr. Gaydos gives his students an opportunity to practice the maneuver on a realistic human dummy.
B)   Mr. Gaydos shows his students pictures of the various steps involved in the maneuver.
C)   Mr. Gaydos describes Dr. Heimlich's medical background and his motivation for developing the procedure.
D)   Mr. Gaydos encourages his students to talk themselves through the procedure as they perform it.

Question 17

As a teacher, you want your students to use effective information processing strategies as they study classroom subject matter. You consider research about the effects of classroom assessment tasks on learning, and you conclude that you should:

Accepted Answer

A)   Ask many short questions rather than a few lengthy ones.
B)   Assess students' rote knowledge of the material first, then ask higher-level questions about the material in a subsequent assessment.
C)   Give assessment tasks that require meaningful understanding of the material.
D)   Not give paper-pencil tests at all.Essay Questions

Question 18

Choose a topic with which you are familiar, and imagine that you have to give a half-hour lecture on that topic. Describe your topic, then explain in concrete terms the steps you would take in your lecture to maximize the likelihood that your listeners would engage in:
a. Meaningful learning
b. Organization
c. Elaboration
d. Visual imagery

Accepted Answer

The answer of Choose a topic with which you are...

Question 19

A revision of Bloom's taxonomy published in 2001 described in the textbook) can help teachers consider not only the various types of cognitive processes that should be encouraged but also the:

Accepted Answer

A)   Environmental contexts in which each process is most suitable
B)   Types of knowledge to which those processes might be applied
C)   Specific instructional methods most effective in fostering each process
D)   Forms that those processes might take in literacy, mathematics, science, and social studies

Question 20

Maria is listening to her teacher talk about how rainy weather develops. Maria thinks, "Rain … hmm, it's supposed to rain tomorrow … I wonder where I left my umbrella … I think I took it to the library yesterday … I'll bet that's where I left my notebook, too." Maria's thoughts illustrate:

Accepted Answer

A)   construction in storage
B)   construction in retrieval
C)   retrieval cues
D)   spreading activation

Exam 8: Long-Term Memory Storage and Retrieval Processes