Question 1

Some patients with anterograde amnesia have learned how to spot hard-to-find figures in the Where's Waldo? series without any conscious awareness that they can do so. This best illustrates their retention of ________ memories.

Accepted Answer

The fact that patients with anterograde amnesia can find figures in the Where's Waldo? series without conscious awareness suggests that they have retained implicit memories. These are memories that are not consciously recognized but still affect behavior and performance.

Question 2

The inability to form new memories is called

Accepted Answer

Anterograde amnesia is a type of memory loss in which a person cannot form new memories after suffering damage or trauma to certain areas of the brain, such as the hippocampus. Repression, shallow processing, and retroactive interference all involve different aspects of memory but do not specifically refer to the inability to form new memories.

Question 3

When Jake applied for a driver's license, he was embarrassed by a momentary inability to remember his address. Jake's memory difficulty most likely resulted from a(n) ________ failure.

Accepted Answer

Retrieval failure occurs when one is unable to access stored information from memory. In this case, Jake knew his address but was momentarily unable to retrieve it from memory, resulting in his memory difficulty.

Question 4

Professor Maslova has so many memories of former students that she has difficulty remembering the names of new students. The professor's difficulty best illustrates

Accepted Answer

The professor's difficulty in remembering new students is an example of proactive interference, in which previously learned information (memories of former students) interferes with the ability to remember new information (names of new students).

Question 5

The inability to remember whose face appears on a five-dollar bill is most likely due to a failure in

Accepted Answer

The answer of The inability to remember whose face appears...

Question 6

After studying biology all afternoon, Alonzo is having difficulty remembering details of the organic chemistry material he memorized that morning. Alonzo's difficulty best illustrates

Accepted Answer

Retroactive interference occurs when new learning interferes with the ability to recall older information. In this case, Alonzo's study of biology is interfering with his ability to recall the organic chemistry material he memorized earlier that day.

Question 7

Harry Bahrick observed that three years after people completed a Spanish course, they had forgotten much of the vocabulary they had learned. This finding indicates that information is lost while it is

Accepted Answer

The finding that people had forgotten much of the Spanish vocabulary they had learned three years after completing the course suggests that the information had been lost from storage over time, indicating that option D is the best choice. The other options do not accurately describe the process through which memories decay over time.

Question 8

Austin can't remember Jack Smith's name because he wasn't paying attention when Jack was formally introduced. Austin's poor memory is best explained in terms of

Accepted Answer

Austin's poor memory can be attributed to encoding failure, which occurs when information is not properly processed and stored in memory. Because Austin was not paying attention during the introduction, he did not encode Jack Smith's name into his memory properly, resulting in his inability to recall it later.

Question 9

Learning a new online banking password may block the recall of a familiar old password. This illustrates

Accepted Answer

Retroactive interference occurs when new information interferes with the recall of old information. In this case, learning a new online banking password may make it difficult to recall a familiar old password due to interference. Option A (spacing effect) and option D (proactive interference) do not fit the scenario described. Option C (source amnesia) refers to difficulty in remembering where or how information was learned, which is not the issue in this case.

Question 10

The disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information is called

Accepted Answer

Proactive interference occurs when previously learned information interferes with the ability to remember new information. This is in contrast to retroactive interference, where the new information interferes with the recall of old information. The testing effect and spacing effect refer to positive effects on memory recall, and are therefore not the correct choices in this context.

Question 11

An inability to access information in long-term memory is known as

Accepted Answer

Retrieval failure, also known as retrieval inhibition, occurs when a memory is stored in long-term memory but cannot be retrieved or accessed for some reason. This is different from forgetting, which suggests that the memory is lost or erased from the brain. Retrieval failure is often caused by interference or a lack of retrieval cues.

Question 12

Ebbinghaus found the task of learning new lists of nonsense syllables increasingly difficult as his research career progressed. Which of the following best explains his problem?

Accepted Answer

Proactive interference occurs when older memories interfere with the ability to learn and remember new information, which explains Ebbinghaus's increasing difficulty in learning new lists.

Question 13

Two people learned nonsense syllables and then tried to recall them after up to eight hours had elapsed. Jenkins and Dallenbach observed that forgetting occurred least rapidly when the individuals spent their time

Accepted Answer

Jenkins and Dallenbach observed that forgetting occurred least rapidly when individuals slept, indicating that sleep played a role in consolidating memory.

Question 14

Knowledge of Latin can help people to learn French. This illustrates

Accepted Answer

Positive transfer is the occurrence when previously learned information helps to learn and remember new information. Latin and French are both Romance languages, meaning they have a similar linguistic structure and vocabulary. Therefore, knowledge of Latin can positively transfer to learning French, making it easier for someone to learn French due to the similarities in the languages.

Question 15

Nancy was daydreaming about her college plans during a boring lecture on the history of computers. She doesn't remember that ENIAC was the first functioning digital computer because she wasn't paying attention. Nancy's poor memory is best explained in terms of

Accepted Answer

Nancy's poor memory is best explained by encoding failure, as she wasn't paying attention during the lecture on the history of computers and therefore did not effectively encode the information she needed to remember.

Question 16

Jimmy was a patient with anterograde amnesia triggered by brain damage in 1945. Jimmy lost his ability to form new ________ memories, but his ability for ________ remained intact.

Accepted Answer

The answer of Jimmy was a patient with anterograde amnesia...

Question 17

Although Arturo has looked at his watch thousands of times, he is unable to recall whether the watch features Arabic or Roman numerals. This is most likely because of a failure in

Accepted Answer

Encoding is the process of transforming information into a form that can be stored in memory. In Arturo's case, the failure to recall whether his watch features Arabic or Roman numerals suggests that the information was not effectively encoded in the first place.

Question 18

Using nonsense syllables to study memory, Ebbinghaus found that

Accepted Answer

Ebbinghaus discovered that the forgetting curve shows that memory loss is most rapid shortly after learning new information, and then the rate of forgetting slows down over time.

Question 19

Although Yusef was having difficulty recalling the capital of Spain, he quickly and correctly identified it after being given a list of cities in Spain. Yusef's initial inability to recall the answer was due to a failure in

Accepted Answer

Yusef's initial difficulty in recalling the capital of Spain suggests that the information was stored in his long-term memory but could not be retrieved at that moment. Therefore, the failure to retrieve the information was due to a retrieval problem.

Question 20

Retroactive interference refers to the

Accepted Answer

Retroactive interference occurs when new learning interferes with the recall of previously learned information, leading to forgetting or confusion. This is in contrast to proactive interference, which occurs when old information interferes with the recall of new information.

Quiz 26: A: Forgetting, Memory Construction