Deck 8: Everyday Memory and Memory Errors

Question 1

Bartlett's experiment in which English participants were asked to recall the "War of the Ghosts" story that was taken from the French Indian culture illustrated the

A)misinformation effect.
B)familiarity effect.
C)constructive nature of memory.
D)reminiscence bump.

Answer 1

constructive nature of memory.

Question 2

A lesson to be learned from the research on flashbulb memories is that

A)rehearsal cannot account for them.
B)people's confidence in a memory predicts its accuracy (high confidence = high accuracy).
C)extreme vividness of a memory does not mean it is accurate.
D)they are permanent and resist forgetting.

Answer 2

extreme vividness of a memory does not mean it is accurate.

Question 3

Flashbulb memory is best represented by which of the following statements?

A)It is vivid memory for emotional events.
B)It is vivid,highly accurate memory for the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an emotional event.
C)It is memory for the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an emotional event that remains especially vivid but not necessarily accurate over time.
D)It is vivid,highly accurate memory for emotional events.

Answer 3

It is memory for the circumstances surrounding how a person heard about an emotional event that remains especially vivid but not necessarily accurate over time.

Question 4

The "telephone game" is often played by children.One child creates a story and whispers it to a second child,who does the same to a third child,and so on.When the last child recites the story to the group,his or her reproduction of the story is generally shorter than the original and contains many omissions and inaccuracies.This game shows how memory is aprocess.

A)life-narrative
B)narrative-rehearsal
C)consequentiality based
D)constructive

Question 5

Asking people to recall the most influential events that happened during their college careers shows thatin people's lives appear to be particularly memorable.

A)trauma-based experiences
B)family-centered challenges
C)the freshman year
D)transition points

Question 6

Schrauf and Rubin's "two groups of immigrants" study found that the reminiscence bump coincided with periods of rapid change,occurring at a normal age for people emigrating early in life but shifting to 15 years later for those who emigrated later.These results support the

A)cognitive hypothesis.
B)self-image hypothesis.
C)narrative rehearsal hypothesis.
D)autobiographical hypothesis.

Question 7

Stanny and Johnson's "weapons focus" experiment,investigating memory for crime scenes,found that

A)the presence of a weapon enhances memory for all parts of the event.
B)the presence of a weapon has no effect on memory for the event.
C)the threat of a weapon causes people to focus their attention away from the weapon itself.
D)the presence of a weapon hinders memory for other parts of the event.

Question 8

The repeated reproduction technique used in memory studies involves

A)the same participants remembering some information at longer and longer intervals after learning the information.
B)different groups of participants remembering some information across different periods of time after learning the information.
C)the same participants remembering some information for as many trials as it takes to recall all of the information correctly.
D)the same participants recalling some information many times but,each time,receiving different retrieval cues to assist their recall.

Question 9

For most adults over age 40,the reminiscence bump describes enhanced memory for

A)childhood and adolescence.
B)adolescence and young adulthood.
C)young adulthood and middle age.
D)childhood and middle age.

Question 10

Your text describes an experiment by Talarico and Rubin (2003)that measured people's memories of the terrorist attacks on September 11,2001.Which of the following was the primary result of that research?

A)Participants had very little confidence in the accuracy of their memories of the events 32 weeks after they occurred.
B)Participants had a very high level of confidence of the terrorist events and also had high confidence in their present "everyday" memories 32 weeks later.
C)Participants had high confidence in the accuracy of their memories of the terrorist events 32 weeks later,but when actually tested made significant errors when asked what they were doing on the day of the attacks.
D)After 32 weeks,participants had a high level of confidence in their memories of the terrorist events,but lower belief in their memories of "everyday" events.

Question 11

Extrapolating from the cultural life script hypothesis,which of the following events would be easiest to recall?

A)Retiring from work at age 40
B)Marrying at age 60
C)Graduating from college at age 22
D)Having a child at age 45

Question 12

Wei has allergy symptoms.He has gone to his regular doctor and an allergy specialist,but he wasn't given a prescription by either doctor.Instead,he was advised to buy an over-the-counter medicine.While he was in the specialist's waiting area,he read a magazine where he saw three ads for an allergy medicine called SneezeLess.A week later,in a drug store,Wei says to his brother,"My doctor says SneezeLess works great.I'll buy that one." Wei and his doctor never discussed SneezeLess.Wei has fallen victim to which of the following errors?

A)MPI
B)Recovered memory
C)Schema confusion
D)Source monitoring

Question 13

The observation that older adults often become nostalgic for the "good old days" reflects the self-image hypothesis,which states that

A)life in a society gets more complicated and difficult as generations pass.
B)memory for life events is enhanced during the time we assume our life identities.
C)people tend to remember more of the positive events in their lives than negative ones.
D)our memories change as we live longer and have more "lifetime periods" to draw events from.

Question 14

Experiments that argue against a special flashbulb memory mechanism find that as time increases since the occurrence of the flashbulb event,participants

A)remember more details about the event.
B)make more errors in their recollections.
C)report less confidence about their recollections.
D)report less vivid recollections of the event.

Question 15

In the "War of the Ghosts" experiment,participants' reproductions contained inaccuracies based on

A)narrative rehearsal.
B)source misattributions.
C)cultural expectations.
D)shallow processing.

Question 16

Your text argues that the proper procedure for measuring the accuracy of flashbulb memories is

A)source monitoring.
B)scripting.
C)repeated recall.
D)pre-cueing.

Question 17

According to theapproach to memory,what people report as memories is based on what actually happened plus additional factors such as other knowledge,experiences,and expectations.

A)event-specific
B)source
C)constructive
D)misinformation

Question 18

The idea that we remember life events better because we encounter the information over and over in what we read,see on TV,and talk about with other people is called the

A)narrative rehearsal hypothesis.
B)cognitive hypothesis.
C)life-narrative hypothesis.
D)reminiscence hypothesis.

Question 19

Unconscious plagiarism of the work of others is known as

A)narrative rehearsal.
B)cryptomnesia.
C)repeated reproduction.
D)repeated recall.

Question 20

Autobiographical memory research shows that a person's brain is more extensively activated when viewing photos

A)the person has seen before.
B)of familiar places.
C)they took themselves.
D)the person has never seen before.

Question 21

occurs when more recent learning impairs memory for something that happened further back in the past.

A)Reminiscent memory
B)Pragmatic inference
C)Feature integration
D)Retroactive interference

Question 22

Arkes and Freedman's "baseball game" experiment asked participants to indicate whether the following sentence was present in a passage they had previously read about events in a game: "The batter was safe at first." Their findings showed inaccurate memories involved

A)omissions of information that was presented.
B)participants who did not understand baseball and assumed more information was presented than actually was.
C)creations from inferences based on baseball knowledge.
D)confusions about presented information when it was ambiguous.

Question 23

The experiment in which participants first read sentences about a baseball game and were then asked to identify sentences they had seen before,illustrated that memory

A)is better for vivid descriptions.
B)is like a tape recording.
C)depends on the participant's mood.
D)involves making inferences.

Question 24

The retroactive interference hypothesis states that the misinformation effect occurs because

A)MPI obstructs or distorts memories formed during the original experiencing of an event.
B)MPI cues the rememberer that an error in memory is occurring.
C)MPI fills in the gaps in the original memory where it lacked detail.
D)the original memory for an event decays over time,leaving room for MPI to infiltrate the memory later.

Question 25

Your text's discussion of false memories leads to the conclusion that false memories

A)arise from the same constructive processes that produce true memories.
B)occur for details but not for entire events.
C)occur in laboratory settings but do not occur in real-world circumstances.
D)do not occur for all people but rather are experienced by suggestible or inattentive people.

Question 26

Loftus and Palmer's "car-crash films" experiment described in the text shows how a seemingly minor word change can produce a change in a person's memory report.In this study,the MPI was (were)the word(s)

A)"fast."
B)"smashed."
C)"miles per hour."
D)"car crash."

Question 27

In the experiment in which participants sat in an office and then were asked to remember what they saw in the office,participants "remembered" some things,like books,that weren't actually there.This experiment illustrates the effect ofon memory.

A)schemas
B)scripts
C)confabulation
D)bias

Question 28

Which of the following is the most accurate statement regarding post-event information and the misinformation effect?

A)The misinformation effect does not occur when people are told explicitly that the post-event information may be incorrect
B)Even when participants are told that the post-event information is incorrect,the misinformation effect can still occur.
C)Misinformation effects are significantly reduced when post-event information is provided,but only if that information is given within just a few minutes of the initial event.
D)The provision of accurate post-event information provided a paradoxical (and as of yet unexplained)increase in the misinformation effect

Question 29

The misinformation effect can be explained by

A)proactive interference.
B)retroactive interference.
C)schematic biases.
D)repeated familiarity effects.

Question 30

The conclusion to be drawn from the man named Shereshevskii whose abnormal brain functioning gave him virtually limitless word-for-word memory is that having memory like a video recorder

A)is largely a blessing because no event would be erased.
B)is an advantage because it eliminates "selective" recording (remembering some events and forgetting others),which provides no useful service to humans.
C)helped him draw powerful inferences and intelligent conclusions from his vast knowledge base.
D)can seriously disrupt functioning in one's personal life

Question 31

In the word list experiment that was based on work by Deese (1959)and Roediger & McDermott (1995),many students incorrectly remembered hearing the wordas part of the list of presented stimuli.This highlights a disadvantage of memory's constructive nature.

A)blanket
B)sleep
C)tired
D)drowsy

Question 32

"S," who had a photographic memory that was described as virtually limitless,was able to achieve many feats of memory.According to the discussion in your text,S's memory system operated

A)in a manner that bypassed normal neurological "blocks."
B)less efficiently than normal.
C)using more visual encoding than normal.
D)using stronger semantic connections than normal.

Question 33

A script is a type of schema that also includes knowledge of

A)a sequence of actions.
B)what is involved in a particular experience.
C)information stored in both semantic and episodic memory.
D)items appropriate to a particular setting.

Question 34

Jackie went to the grocery store to pick up yogurt,bread,and apples.First,she picked up a hand basket for carrying her groceries,and then she searched the store.After finding what she needed,she stood in a check-out line.Then,the cashier put her items in a plastic bag,and soon after,Jackie left the store.As readers of this event,we understand that Jackie paid for the groceries,even though it wasn't mentioned,because we are relying on a grocery store _____.

A)misattribution
B)script
C)narrative
D)schema

Question 35

In the "word list" false memory experiment where several students incorrectly remembered hearing the word sleep,false memory occurs because of

A)constructive memory processes.
B)verbatim recall.
C)the effect of scripts.
D)cryptomnesia

Question 36

occurs when reading a sentence leads a person to expect something that is not explicitly stated or necessarily implied by the sentence.

A)Observer perspective
B)Pragmatic inference
C)Prospective memory
D)Automatic narrative

Question 37

The misinformation effect occurs when a person's memory for an event is modified by misleading information presented

A)before the event.
B)during the event.
C)after the event.
D)all of the above

Question 38

Jacoby's experiment,in which participants made judgments about whether they had previously seen the names of famous and non-famous people,found that inaccurate memories based on source misattributions occurred after a delay of

A)one week.
B)24 hours.
C)one hour.
D)one month.

Question 39

The experiment for which people were asked to make fame judgments for both famous and non-famous names (and for which Sebastian Weissdorf was one of the names to be remembered)illustrated the effect ofon memory.

A)repeated rehearsal of distinctive names
B)source misattributions
C)encoding specificity
D)schemas

Question 40

Your friend has been sick for several days,so you go over to her home to make her some chicken soup.Searching for a spoon,you first reach in a top drawer beside the dishwasher.Then,you turn to the big cupboard beside the stove to search for a pan.In your search,you have relied on a kitchen

A)source memory.
B)script.
C)schema.
D)scan technique.

Question 41

Describe experimental evidence to explain how familiarity can lead to memory errors.Also,describe an eyewitness testimony example of this phenomenon.Finally,explain how familiarity can lead students to commit errors on a multiple choice exam.

Question 42

Suppose that your friend has just done poorly on a very important college exam.She is complaining about her memory failures and wishing she could develop photographic-type memory to make life easier.Provide information based on your textbook chapter to develop a compelling argument about why it is actually beneficial that human memory is NOT like a video recorder.

Question 43

Research on eyewitness testimony has shown that the more confident the person giving the testimony is of their memories,

A)the more accurate the memories are.
B)the more convincing the testimony is to a jury.
C)the more likely they are to be influenced by a weapons focus.
D)the more accurate the memories are and the more convincing the testimony is to a jury.

Question 44

Much attention has been focused on the misinformation effect because it provides a powerful demonstration of how suggestion can distort our memory for events.Define this effect and discuss how it has been demonstrated.Then,explain three mechanisms proposed to account for the misinformation effect,describing the experiments that have been done to test these mechanisms.

Question 45

Which statement below is NOT true,based on the results of memory research?

A)Suggestion can create false memories for events that occurred when a person was a young child.
B)Suggestion can create false memories for an event that a person has experienced just recently.
C)Although eyewitness testimony is often faulty,people who have just viewed a videotape of a crime are quite accurate at picking the "perpetrator" from a lineup.
D)Many miscarriages of justice have occurred based on faulty eyewitness testimony.

Question 46

Kieran found that studying for his Spanish exam made it more difficult to remember some of the vocabulary words he had just studied for his French exam earlier in the day.This is an example of

A)retroactive interference.
B)a life-narrative confusion.
C)memory-trace replacement.
D)a simultaneous presentation effect.

Question 47

In Lindsay's "misinformation effect" experiment,participants saw a sequence of slides showing a maintenance man stealing money and a computer.This slide presentation included narration by a female speaker who described what was happening in the slides as they were shown.Results showed that the misinformation effect was greatest when MPI presentation was

A)visual.
B)auditory,regardless of the gender of the speaker.
C)auditory from a female speaker.
D)auditory from a male speaker.

Question 48

Which of the following statements is true of police lineups?

A)A sequential lineup increases the chance that the witness compares people in the lineup to each other.
B)A simultaneous lineup decreases the chance of falsely identifying an innocent person as the perpetrator.
C)A sequential lineup increases the chance that the witness will make a relative judgment about all the suspects they saw.
D)A sequential lineup increases the chance that the witness compares each person in the lineup to his or her memory of the event.

Question 49

Which of the following statements is true of the cognitive interview technique?

A)Police ask witnesses questions and have them rate their confidence level in their recollections.
B)Police offer positive reinforcement to witnesses (e.g. ,"Good,that makes sense.")when the witnesses give information consistent with what is in the police file.
C)Police allow witnesses to talk with a minimum of interruption from the officer.
D)Police start their interview with simple filler questions to make the witnesses feel comfortable.

Question 50

Research on eyewitness testimony reveals that

A)highly confident eyewitnesses are usually accurate.
B)it is unnecessary to warn an eyewitness that a suspect may or may not be in a lineup.
C)when viewing a lineup,an eyewitness's confidence in her choice of the suspect can be increased by an authority's confirmation of her choice,even when the choice is wrong.
D)despite public misconception,eyewitnesses are usually very accurate when selecting a perpetrator from a lineup.

Question 51

The "wedding reception" false memory experiment shows that false memories can be explained as a product of familiarity and

A)retroactive interference.
B)consequentiality.
C)source misattribution.
D)confabulation.

Question 52

Your text explains that one common type of human memory error involves source monitoring.Define source- monitoring errors.Then,describe some research that illustrates these errors.Finally,explain why these errors reinforce the characterization of memory as being "constructive."

Question 53

Much research has been dedicated to improving the reliability of eyewitness testimony.One finding reveals that when constructing a lineup,

A)increasing similarity between "fillers" and a suspect leads to an increased level of erroneous identification of innocent people.
B)increasing similarity between "fillers" and a suspect leads to an increased level of missed identification of some guilty suspects.
C)increasing the number of fillers from 5 to 7 actually decreases the rate of false positive identifications.
D)decreasing the number of fillers from 6 to 3 actually increases the rate of false positive identifications.

Question 54

Lindsay and coworkers "slime in the first-grade teacher's desk" experiment showed that presenting

A)accounts of actual childhood events supplied by a participant's parent increased the likelihood of false memories.
B)accounts of actual childhood events supplied by a participant's parent decreased the likelihood of false memories.
C)a photograph of the participant's first-grade class increased the likelihood of false memories.
D)a photograph of the participant's first-grade class decreased the likelihood of false memories.

Question 55

Describe memory over the lifespan by describing the relationship between the ability to remember events in one's life and age at the time of the event.For example,what would a plot of "events remembered" vs."age" look like for a 40-year-old person? How would it differ for a 70-year-old person? Additionally,describe two competing hypotheses for the reminiscence bump.

Question 56

Suppose a friend tells you she has such a vivid memory of a personal event that it seems like a photograph.She wonders aloud about these kinds of memories and how they work.Explain to her the nature of flashbulb memories and what is known about them.

Question 57

When presenting lineups to eyewitnesses,it has been found that a(n)lineup is much more likely to result in an innocent person being falsely identified.

A)sequential
B)simultaneous
C)immediate
D)precued

Question 58

An important application of memory research has been in understanding the nature of eyewitness testimony.Citing the research in your text,explain why people make errors in eyewitness testimony.

Question 59

Your text's discussion of eyewitness testimony illustrates that this type of memory is frequently influenced by all of the following EXCEPT

A)failing to elaboratively rehearse these kinds of events due to fear.
B)inattention to relevant information due to the emotional nature of these events.
C)source-monitoring errors due to familiarity.
D)increased confidence due to postevent questioning.

Question 60

Lindsay's misinformation effect experiment,in which participants were given a memory test about a sequence of slides showing a maintenance man stealing money and a computer,showed that participants are influenced by MPI

A)if they believe the postevent information is correct.
B)only if the MPI is presented immediately after viewing the event.
C)even if they are told to ignore the postevent information.
D)if the MPI is consistent with social stereotypes.