Deck 8: The Information-Processing Approach

Question 1

The cognitive information-processing approach emphasizes that children manipulate information, monitor it, and strategize about it.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Memory and thinking are central to the cognitive information-processing approach.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

A 5-year-old child and a 15-year-old adolescent can process information at the same speed and in the same capacity.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Attention is the focusing of mental resources.

Question 5

Children's ability to control and direct their attention increases as they get older.

Question 6

Selective attention is the ability to maintain attention to a selected stimulus for a prolonged period of time.

Question 7

Rehearsal works best for students when they need to remember a list of items over a brief period of time.

Question 8

Rehearsal involves learning new things by adding personal meaning to the information.

Question 9

The more extensively a student processes new information, the more likely it is that the student will remember it.

Question 10

Thinking about personal associations with information can be distracting, thus making it more difficult for students to remember.

Question 11

Atkinson and Shiffrin claimed that the length of time that information is held in the short-term memory has little influence on the chance that this information will make it into long-term memory.

Question 12

Episodic memory is the retention of information about the where and when of life's happenings, such as students' first day of school or where they went on their first date.

Question 13

Network theories describe how information is transformed from short-term to long-term memory.

Question 14

Schema theories state that when we reconstruct information, we fit it into information that already exists in our minds.

Question 15

Network theories assume that long-term memories are not very exact, while schema theories assume specific facts can be retrieved quite accurately.

Question 16

What a person is likely to remember is shaped and influenced by his/her cultural background.

Question 17

A teacher with adaptive expertise operates independently of her colleagues and adheres to existing routines and practices.

Question 18

Our ability to learn new things depends considerably on what we already know about them.

Question 19

Regardless of his or her field of expertise, an expert has a better memory than a novice when presented with a new and unfamiliar topic.

Question 20

A metacognitive activity occurs when students use self-awareness to adapt and manage strategies during actual problem solving and thinking.

Question 21

What is metacognition?

A) Being able to remember information longer in short-term memory
B) Being able to remember information longer in long-term memory
C) Knowing about knowing
D) A type of forgetting

Question 22

At what age do children begin to understand perceptions, desires, and emotions?

A) 2 to 3 years
B) 4 to 5 years
C) Middle childhood
D) Adolescence

Question 23

Tarik knows he must take careful notes while reading in order to remember important details about the characters and plot. He has learned that he must devote considerable attention to note-taking in order to perform well on the task. Tarik is most likely in which of the following age groups?

A) Early childhood
B) Middle childhood
C) Late childhood
D) Adolescence

Question 24

Mrs. Johnston is a creative writing teacher. She frequently guides students to ask themselves questions such as, "How can proofreading help me in writing a paper?" "How can outlining help me in writing a paper?" or "How can peer reviews help me in writing a paper?" This teacher is encouraging students to do which of the following?

A) Use divided attention while writing
B) Use rehearsal while writing
C) Use strategies while writing
D) Use mnemonic strategies while writing

Question 25

Which of the following activities would best encourage metacognition in students?

A) Writing an essay about last year's vacation
B) Solving word problems in math
C) Evaluating one's own strategy for taking notes
D) Reading a novel about a historic event

Question 26

Mrs. Berstein created an activity for her students, which consists of having to reflect on their own learning and knowledge so that students can be more attentive to the knowledge they possess. Which of the following activities is Mrs. Berstein encouraging in her students?

A) Elaboration
B) Metacognition
C) Rote memory
D) Cue-dependent forgetting

Question 27

Which of the following activities would be best for acquiring expertise?

A) Practice
B) Motivation
C) Talent
D) All of these

Question 28

Which of the following activities would be recommended if someone wanted to be an expert?

A) Metacognition
B) Motivation
C) Patience
D) Excellent memory

Question 29

Which of the following is a characteristic of experts?

A) Notice features and meaningful patterns that novices do not
B) Have a great deal of content knowledge organized to reflect a deep understanding of the subject matter
C) Can retrieve important knowledge with little effort
D) All of these

Question 30

Which of the following is the initial stage of expertise in a particular domain (such as English, biology, or mathematics)?

A) Acclimation
B) Assimilation
C) Conceptualization
D) Surface realization

Question 31

A student in the initial stage of expertise in a particular domain often does which of the following?

A) Changes and combines strategies to solve the given problem
B) Experiences beginner's luck when acquiring expert knowledge
C) Experiences difficulty distinguishing between accurate or inaccurate and relevant or irrelevant information
D) Becomes discouraged by failure and attempts to become an expert in a different domain

Question 32

Which of the following statements is true concerning expert knowledge?

A) Students typically enter the classroom equipped with the strategies they need to move beyond the acclimation stage.
B) Teachers need to guide students in determining what content is central and what is peripheral, what is accurate and well supported, and what is inaccurate.
C) Students at all stages of expertise intuitively know how to change and combine strategies to solve problems.
D) Teachers cannot help students learn effective strategies for acquiring knowledge; it is an innate ability that students may or may not have.

Question 33

Which of the following does not characterize a teacher with adaptive expertise?

A) Mr. Wallace does not modify his instruction for English language learners in the classroom.
B) Ms. Janaka is trying a new alternative assessment with her science students.
C) Mrs. Chu invites a colleague to observe her classroom and offer feedback.
D) Mr. Bradford quickly rephrases his ideas to ensure student understanding.

Question 34

Which of the following is a strategy that an expert would use?

A) Spreading out and consolidating learning
B) Asking oneself questions
C) Taking good notes
D) Using a study system
E) All of the above

Question 35

Which of the following is not a strategy that experts would use?

A) Spreading out and consolidating learning
B) Not monitoring their own learning by asking themselves questions
C) Taking good notes
D) Using a study system

Question 36

Which of the following is a good note-taking strategy?

A) Summarizing
B) Asking questions
C) Concept maps
D) Outlining
E) All of these

Question 37

Which of the following is part of a good study system?

A) Question
B) Preview
C) Read
D) Reflect
E) All of the above

Question 38

Which of the following is not part of a good study system?

A) Question
B) Preview
C) Read
D) Summarize
E) None of the above

Question 39

Kai dreams of becoming a master pianist in the future, playing for orchestras and concert halls. When his mother reminds him to practice the piano, however, he produces an excuse and says that he'll practice later. Which of the following best describes Kai?

A) Kai is already an expert pianist and doesn't need to practice.
B) Kai lacks the commitment and motivation required to become an expert pianist.
C) Kai is too young to be an expert pianist and will grow into it.
D) Kai's mother puts too much pressure on him and is diminishing his motivation to play the piano.

Question 40

Mrs. Benson is considered one of the best math teachers at Lincoln Middle School. Her students say that she is good at helping them learn new concepts and that she gives them strategies for overcoming the difficulties they experience. They say she is a challenging teacher but she knows how to help students succeed. Which type of knowledge is Mrs. Benson using to help her students learn?

A) Pedagogical content knowledge
B) Math content knowledge
C) Metacognitive knowledge
D) Motivational knowledge

Question 41

Joyce wants her students to better remember the information they read. Thus she decides to encourage them to briefly survey the material to get the overall organization of ideas, have them ask questions of themselves about the material, and tell them to be active readers. What is Joyce using?

A) Characteristics of experts
B) A strategy often associated with experts
C) Reading for fun
D) Part of a good study system

Question 42

Mr. Farrell wants to increase his students' understanding of the material that they read. He has his students stop reading and ponder what they have read about and its meaningfulness, then he has them self-test to see if they can remember the material, and finally he has them go over the material and evaluate what they know and what they do not know. What is Mr. Farrell using?

A) Characteristics of experts
B) A strategy often associated with experts
C) Reading for fun
D) Part of a good study system

Question 43

Which researcher proposed the working memory model, which views working memory as a workbench?

A) Jean Piaget
B) Alan Baddeley
C) George Miller
D) Lev Vygotsky

Question 44

Chunking is a beneficial strategy for improving memory that involves which of the following?

A) Processing information and providing examples
B) Relating new information to personal experience
C) Using symbols to represent verbal information
D) Grouping information into higher-order units

Question 45

Sensory memory lasts approximately how long?

A) Up to several seconds
B) Up to 60 seconds
C) About 20 minutes
D) A lifetime

Question 46

Short-term or "working" memory is retained for approximately how long?

A) A fraction of a second
B) About 10 seconds
C) Up to 30 seconds
D) About 20 minutes

Question 47

According to which researcher(s), memory involves a sequence of three stages: sensory memory, working memory, and long-term memory?

A) George Miller
B) Allan Paivo
C) Jean Piaget
D) Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin

Question 48

Which of the following statements best describes the nature of declarative memory?

A) A student is able to provide specific factual information about an event.
B) A student applies knowledge to perform a certain task.
C) A student recognizes a famous person.
D) A student recalls a specific event from his or her past.

Question 49

Semantic memory includes all of the following except which one?

A) Knowledge of the sort learned in school
B) Knowledge in the form of skills that can be performed
C) Knowledge in different fields of expertise
D) Knowledge about the meaning of words and other common things

Question 50

What is a schema?

A) Information that already exists in a person's mind
B) Information that cannot be retrieved from a person's memory
C) The manner in which information is organized and connected within a person's memory
D) The process by which information is moved from short-term to long-term memory

Question 51

The serial position effect states that recall

A) is best for items that are positioned in the middle of the list.
B) is best for items that are positioned at the beginning and the end of the list.
C) decreases as the length of the list increases.
D) decreases as complexity of items on the list increases.

Question 52

What is episodic memory?

A) A student's general knowledge about the world
B) Knowledge in the form of skills and cognitive operations
C) The retention of information about the where and when of life's happenings
D) "Everyday" knowledge

Question 53

The interference theory states that which of the following circumstances causes individuals to forget information that has already been stored?

A) Information is misplaced due to a lack of schema.
B) Other information gets in the way.
C) The neurochemical memory trace has decayed.
D) Information has been stored in short-term memory rather than long-term.

Question 54

The decay theory states that which of the following circumstances causes individuals to forget information that has already been stored?

A) Information is misplaced due to a lack of schema.
B) Other information gets in the way.
C) The neurochemical memory trace has disintegrated.
D) Information has been stored in short-term memory rather than long-term.

Question 55

According to the decay theory, which of the following is the cause of forgetting?

A) Passage of time
B) Lack of schema
C) Lack of initial encoding
D) Interference by new information

Question 56

Which of the following scenarios presents the best example of encoding?

A) Sarah remembers her first day of school.
B) Julie is listening to music.
C) Isaac is writing a letter.
D) Jose is practicing the alphabet.

Question 57

Which of the following scenarios best depicts a student's declarative memory?

A) Hilda recognizes a picture of Martin Luther King Jr.
B) Mohammed can carve a sculpture from a piece of wood.
C) Julia can summarize the stages of development according to Jean Piaget.
D) Fred remembers the first time he went to the beach.

Question 58

Consider the following list of words that is read aloud to student volunteers: Cat, Dog, Hat, Goat, Boat, Boy, Girl, Plane, Sun, Moon. According to the serial position effect, a student displaying primacy will most likely remember which of the following words from this list?

A) Cat
B) Goat
C) Girl
D) Moon

Question 59

Which of the following scenarios best depicts elaboration?

A) Juan memorized a list of spelling words for an upcoming test.
B) Kate and Sue brainstormed ideas for a project they were planning for class.
C) Taylor practiced writing the alphabet.
D) When his class studied primates, John recalled the monkeys he saw at the zoo earlier that year.

Question 60

Which one of the following examples best describes thinking in working memory?

A) Charlie has to retrieve information on how to use a pair of scissors before he can begin cutting the shapes out of paper.
B) Wally always confuses the names of his classmates, and of most of his teachers.
C) At the end of soccer practice, Shey runs over to her parents' car while mentally alphabetizing the names of five friends that she wants to ensure her parents invite to her birthday party.
D) Conrad is able to adapt the kicks he learned in karate class to the kids who are bullying him in school.

Question 61

Which of the following best describes sensory memory?

A) It stores everything that is sensed in a relatively unaltered fashion for only an instant.
B) It stores information primarily in terms of its underlying meaning.
C) It selects only a few important pieces of information to store.
D) It stores only a small amount of the information sensed, but chooses information in a random fashion.

Question 62

From the perspective of the Atkinson-Shriffin model of memory, why is attention so important?

A) It gets information into sensory register.
B) It moves information from short-term memory into long-term memory.
C) It moves information from sensory register into long-term memory.
D) It moves information from sensory register into short-term memory.

Question 63

Marnie knows she must pass her English course to graduate, so she will not let what all the other students are doing affect her. This is an example of which of the following?

A) Attention
B) Sensory register
C) Emotions
D) Chunking

Question 64

Loreli's teacher introduces her to a new student named Jerome. Loreli immediately smiles and says, "Hello, Jerome, nice to meet you." A minute later, she wants to introduce Jerome to her friend Myla, but cannot remember his name. According to the Atkinson-Shriffin model of memory, how far in Loreli's memory system did Jerome's name get?

A) It reached the sensory register.
B) It reached working memory.
C) It reached long-term memory.
D) It never got into her memory system at all.

Question 65

Travis's teacher is teaching his class about World War II. Travis is learning places, dates, and important events during the war. What type of memory is this?

A) Elaboration
B) Semantic
C) Declarative
D) Episodic

Question 66

Which of the following best characterizes the duration of the sensory memory?

A) Auditory memory for as long as a month
B) Meaningful information may remain for hours
C) Brief instant
D) Information remains thirty seconds regardless of its nature

Question 67

Knowledge about how to swim is most likely to be stored in long-term memory as which of the following?

A) Declarative knowledge
B) Organization
C) Concept mapping
D) Procedural knowledge

Question 68

Trisha is trying to remember the sequential list of steps that will be on her final exam. What type of memory is Trisha trying to remember?

A) Declarative knowledge
B) Organization
C) Concept mapping
D) Procedural knowledge

Question 69

Which one of the following reflects the typical duration of working (short-term) memory?

A) Elly spent the summer at his grandmother's house and while he was there he could remember his grandmother's telephone number; now that he is home he doesn't remember the number.
B) Hani looked up the correct spelling of a word, but by the time she found a piece of paper on which to write the word on, she had forgotten how to spell it.
C) Ebony remembers most of the information that she has learned about the play discussed in class this week; however, she remembers very little of what she learned about two weeks ago.
D) At 9:00 a.m., Darrell makes a mental list of the five items he needs to purchase at the grocery store at the end of the day. At noon he checks himself and realizes that he still remembers all five. However, at 3:00 p.m. he discovers that he has forgotten three of the five items.

Question 70

Generally speaking, how does elaboration help students learn new information?

A) By helping them organize it hierarchically in memory
B) By having them connect new information with information they already know
C) By having them add their own relevant information
D) By having them learn it faster

Question 71

Which of the following children is not attempting to store declarative knowledge in their long-term memory?

A) Nina imagines what the characters look like when she is reading a Harry Potter book.
B) LaTonya makes flashcards of the concepts in her English class.
C) Robby searches the Internet for a topic to do his science presentation on.
D) Tania studies the periodic table of elements by memorizing the symbol and its place on the table.

Question 72

Kody loves to read. However, his teacher tells him that he should read only what she assigns; otherwise his long-term memory (LTM) will fill up and there will not be any room left to store other things. In this scenario, is Kody's teacher accurate?

A) Yes, because he needs to leave room in his LTM for all of the years of school ahead of him.
B) Yes, because he should not be cluttering his LTM with things he does not need; after all, LTM has a limited capacity.
C) No, the teacher should not discourage a child's reading even if it fills up his LTM.
D) No, the teacher does not know that LTM has an unlimited capacity, and although forgetting can occur it does not fill up.

Question 73

Rhett is studying for his chemistry exam by repeating the information to himself over and over again. Rhett is demonstrating which of the following?

A) Storage in the sensory register
B) The use of rehearsal
C) The use of chunking
D) The use of organization

Question 74

Tony, who is 4 years older than Frank, is explaining the rules of a game to him. Frank is paying close attention, but Tony is talking fast and using words that Frank does not know. When Tony is finished explaining the directions, he asks Frank if he is ready to play and Frank says that he doesn't understand exactly how to play. What part of memory is Frank having problems in?

A) Sensory register
B) Working memory
C) Long-term memory
D) Short-term memory

Question 75

Fourteen-year-old Beverly and 10-year-old Ben are doing their homework. Beverly asks Ben if he minds if she turns on the radio while they work. Ben tells her he doesn't mind. Although Beverly can sing to the radio and do her homework at the same time, Ben is having trouble focusing on his homework. This situation is best explained as which of the following?

A) Beverly has a larger STM than Ben.
B) Ben has problems concentrating and focusing mental resources.
C) Ben has a smaller LTM than Beverly.
D) Ben has automatized listening to the radio and studying and Beverly has not.

Question 76

Mrs. Clarke, a kindergarten teacher, is preparing for the beginning of the school year. She is putting up bright-colored paintings, drawings, and banners on the walls. She also has bright, plastic tablecloths on the tables and bright painted baskets with each student's name on them. Much to her dismay, when the students begin school, she finds it difficult to get them to listen to her. From the perspective of memory, why is Mrs. Clarke having trouble with her students?

A) Because the bright colors are grabbing the children's attention away from her
B) Because the bright colors are making the kids think school is fun
C) Because the bright colors are making the kids happy
D) Because the bright colors are not working, she should change to pastels

Question 77

Which of the following is the best example of a student remembering information because of having received an effective retrieval cue?

A) Miguel has to choose the correct spelling for the word "medieval."
B) Pete and Wyatt have to collaboratively write an essay about the importance of computers.
C) Vicky is preparing to read her book report to the class.
D) Marci is given a project on the classification of leaves

Question 78

Which of the following is not a teaching strategy for helping students pay attention?

A) Encourage students to pay close attention and minimize distractions.
B) Use cues or gestures to signal something is important.
C) Help students generate their own cues.
D) Do not use instructional comments.

Question 79

All of the following strategies help children pay attention except which one?

A) Minimize distraction.
B) Use cues to signal that something is important.
C) Use media and technology to vary the pace of the classroom.
D) Present students with lots of information at a time.

Question 80

Isabella is listening to music while doing her homework. This is an example of which type of attention?

A) Sustained attention
B) Selective attention
C) Divided attention
D) Undivided attention