Peter is quite proud of the poem he's just written. "Usually I spend a lot of time writing a poem," he says, "but this one just popped into my head from out of the blue." What Peter doesn't realize is that the poem is very similar to one he read in a collection of poems by Carl Sandberg a year or so ago-so similar, in fact, that Peter might be accused of plagiarizing Sandberg's work. Peter's error can best be explained as a problem of
A) source monitoring
B) encoding specificity
C) consolidation failure
D) proactive inhibition

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Peter's error is a failure in source monitoring, which is the ability to accurately recall the origin of information. In this case, Peter was not able to correctly remember that the poem he wrote was not an original thought, but rather a memory of something he read before. This can lead to unintentional plagiarism, as in Peter's case.

Peter Is Quite Proud of the Poem He's Just Written