Question 1

According to the discussion at the beginning of the chapter on working memory (Chapter 4),

Accepted Answer

Working memory is understood to be a system that temporarily holds and manipulates information, allowing it to be accessible for current tasks.

Question 2

Working memory is useful in our daily lives because

Accepted Answer

Working memory is flexible, allowing individuals to switch between different tasks and manage multiple pieces of information simultaneously, which is crucial for everyday activities and problem-solving.

Question 3

Solange is trying to recall her friend's new zip code, which is 14454. She remembers it by saying, "My birthday is September 14th; my father is 45 years old, and my nephew is 4 years old." Apparently, Solange

Accepted Answer

Solange has created chunks out of the zip code by associating parts of the zip code with significant personal dates and ages, making it easier to remember by grouping the information into meaningful units.

Question 4

According to the introduction of Chapter 4, one important function of working memory is

Accepted Answer

Working memory is crucial for coordinating current mental activities, acting as a system that manages and manipulates information needed for complex cognitive tasks like learning, reasoning, and comprehension.

Question 5

Suppose that your professor makes a graph that shows the relationship between the order in which a topic was covered in the course and the class's accuracy on test items for that topic. This graph would be called as a

Accepted Answer

A serial position curve illustrates how the position of an item in a sequence affects the probability of recalling that item, which aligns with the description of analyzing the relationship between the order of topics covered and test accuracy on those topics.

Question 6

According to the chapter on working memory, what was nontraditional about George Miller's article on the "magical number seven"?

Accepted Answer

Miller's article was nontraditional because it emphasized active mental processes in working memory, rather than just focusing on stimulus and response, which was a common approach at the time.

Question 7

Suppose that you are listening to an announcer read the names of the winners in an athletic event. You recall the last four names accurately, but you can't recall the names that appeared earlier in the list. This phenomenon is called as

Accepted Answer

This phenomenon is known as the recency effect, which is part of the serial position effect. It describes the tendency of an individual to remember the last items in a series more easily than those in the middle.

Question 8

A friend has just told you his cell phone number, and you repeat it to yourself several times as you search for a pen to record it. The technique you are using to remember the number is called

Accepted Answer

Rehearsal is a cognitive process in which information is repeated over and over as a possible way of learning and remembering it. In this scenario, repeating the phone number multiple times to remember it until you can write it down is an example of rehearsal.

Question 9

Suppose that you are calculating your recent expenses, and you are adding up five 2-digit numbers in your head. As you begin to calculate the final sum, you feel that you've reached the limits of your memory. This strain can be traced to

Accepted Answer

The strain comes from the challenge of holding multiple pieces of information in your working memory simultaneously, which has a limited capacity for processing and temporarily storing information.

Question 10

George Miller's (1956) classic article, on the magical number seven, introduced the concept of a chunk. According to Miller's terminology, a chunk

Accepted Answer

A chunk, as introduced by George Miller, is considered the basic unit in short-term memory, representing a single piece of information that has been grouped together.

Question 11

According to Chapter 4, working memory is especially important because

Accepted Answer

Working memory is crucial because it maintains information in an active, accessible state, enabling us to use this information for various cognitive tasks, such as reasoning, comprehension, and learning. Unlike a perfect copy of a stimulus or a process that occurs after information enters long-term memory, working memory allows for the manipulation and use of held information in the short term.

Question 12

As Chapter 4 discusses, John Brown, Lloyd Peterson, and Margaret Peterson created a classic technique for assessing short-term memory. In this technique, people saw some stimuli, counted backwards by threes during the delay period, and then tried to recall the original stimuli. The results of their research showed that

Accepted Answer

The technique described is known to demonstrate the effects of interference on short-term memory recall, where repeated trials and the intervening task (counting backwards) make it increasingly difficult to recall the original stimuli, even after short delays.

Question 13

Imagine that you are tutoring high school students, and you have quickly presented 12 new terms to them. They are likely to recall the first few terms most accurately because of

Accepted Answer

The primacy effect is a cognitive bias that results in a person recalling the first few items in a series more easily than those in the middle. In this scenario, students are more likely to remember the first few terms presented to them due to this effect.

Question 14

Suppose that a professor asks the students in her class to say their names out loud (one at a time) on the first day of class. Then she asks them to write down as many of their classmates' names as they can recall. Then she constructs a graph that shows "Number of correct responses" on the Y-axis and "Serial position of the name" on the X-axis. The shape of the graph

Accepted Answer

This phenomenon is explained by the serial position effect, where individuals tend to remember the first (primacy effect) and last (recency effect) items in a series better than the middle items, resulting in a U-shaped curve on a graph plotting recall accuracy against item position.

Question 15

Suppose that you have been studying some terms related to your course in biopsychology. After you have been studying for about 15 minutes, you find that you are having more trouble learning and remembering new terms. This problem is an example of

Accepted Answer

Proactive interference occurs when older memory traces inhibit the acquisition and retrieval of newer memories. In this scenario, the difficulty in learning and remembering new terms after studying for a while is due to the interference of previously studied material with the new information being learned.

Question 16

Chapter 4 discussed research on the recency effect. How is this research related to short-term memory?

Accepted Answer

The recency effect refers to the phenomenon where the last items presented in a series are more likely to be remembered, which is attributed to those items still being present in short-term memory at the time of recall.

Question 17

Suppose that you are having trouble recalling the information for a question about Baddeley's theory because the information about Atkinson and Shiffrin's theory (which you learned earlier) keeps interfering. This phenomenon is called

Accepted Answer

Proactive interference occurs when older memory makes it more difficult to remember new information. In this scenario, previously learned information about Atkinson and Shiffrin's theory is interfering with the ability to recall new information about Baddeley's theory.

Question 18

One of the most widely cited articles in psychology is George Miller's (1956) article on the size of short-term memory. According to your text, this article was important in cognitive psychology because

Accepted Answer

George Miller's article was significant because it shifted the focus to cognitive processes, such as mental operations, during a time when behaviorism, which emphasized observable behavior, was dominant in psychology.

Question 19

Imagine that you have volunteered to participate in some psychology research. The researcher tells you to look at several words briefly and then count backwards for about half a minute before recalling those words. The researcher is probably measuring

Accepted Answer

The task described involves briefly viewing words and then performing a distractor task (counting backwards) before recalling the words. This setup is designed to test short-term memory, which holds information for a short duration (seconds to a minute) before it is forgotten or transferred to long-term memory.

Question 20

Suppose that a friend asks you what movies you have seen within the past year. Your recall is especially accurate for the movies you saw during the last 2 weeks. This phenomenon is called

Accepted Answer

The recency effect is a memory phenomenon where individuals can recall the most recent information (in this case, movies seen in the last 2 weeks) more accurately than information from further in the past.

Quiz 4: Working Memory

According to the discussion at the beginning of the chapter on working memory (Chapter 4) ,