Midterm Exam 2 ** Form C **

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1 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 1 John Miyamoto ( jmiyamot@uw.edu) Psych 355: Introduction to Cognitive Psychology Spring 2018 Course website: Midterm Exam 2 ** Form C ** 1. The components of working memory are... a) The phonological loop, the visuospatial sketch pad, the central executive. b) Phonological coding, visual coding, semantic coding. c) Sensory memory, short-term memory, long-term memory. d) Short-term memory, rehearsal, the central executive. 2. Which of the following best illustrates the operation of sensory memory (as it is defined in the modal model of memory that was developed by Atkinson and Shiffrin)? a) I can remember what my mother's face looks like. b) I can remember the painful feeling when I broke my wrist in an accident. c) On a very dark night, a man waves a lighted flashlight in a large arm motion and the light looks like a ribbon of light instead of like a single point. d) While driving a car, I am aware of the positions of cars that are near me even if I'm not looking directly at them Questions 3-6 ask you to decide whether the phenomenon that is described in the question is evidence for the existence of a phonological loop in working memory? (Warning: Some of these answer are not evidence for a phonological loop because they are irrelevant; not because they are false.) 3. If a person suffers a concussion due to a blow to the head, he or she may exhibit graded anterograde amnesia, i.e., an inability to remember experiences that preceded the concussion by a few minutes or hours. a) This is evidence for a phonological loop. b) This is not evidence for a phonological loop. 4. Tulving found that episodic memories were forgotten more quickly then implicit memories. (Episodic memories were tested in a recognition test; implicit memories were tested in a word fragment completion test.) a) This is evidence for a phonological loop. b) This is not evidence for a phonological loop. 5. Conrad (1964) found that recall for visually presented letters tends to exhibit errors that reflect similarity in the sound of the letter, e.g., confusion of "F" with "S". a) This is evidence for a phonological loop. b) This is not evidence for a phonological loop. 6. Memory span is smaller for longer words than for shorter words (word length effect). a) This is evidence for a phonological loop. b) This is not evidence for a phonological loop

2 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 2 7. In the standard analysis of the Brown/Peterson paradigm, data from many different trials are averaged together. The left panel in Figure 1 shows this kind of averaged data. Keppel and Underwood (1962) analyzed these data separately for different trials of the experiment and retention intervals. They found that on the first trial of the experiment, there was very little forgetting as a function of time. The difference between shorter and longer retention intervals only became large on later trials Figure 1. of the experiment. This finding has been interpreted as showing... a) experimental subjects become fatigued during a memory experiment; subjects have greater difficulty retaining information in STM when they are fatigued. b) the capacity of sensory memory is much greater than the capacity of STM. c) information is lost from STM during later trials due to proactive interference. d) rehearsal processes are suppressed in later trials of the Brown-Peterson experiment. 8. Brandimonte et al. (1992) asked subjects to "subtract" one figure from another and give a name to what was left. For example, subjects were asked to subtract B' from B in Figure 2 and name what was left (a correct answer would be "a fish"). There were two conditions. Figure 2. Condition 1: Subjects simply did the mental subtraction task without saying, "la, la, la,...", i.e., without articulatory suppression. Condition 2: Subjects were told to say, "la, la, la,..." while doing the mental subtraction task, i.e., with articulatory suppression. How well did subjects perform in Conditions 1 and 2? What did this show about working memory? a) Subjects in Conditions 1 and 2 did about equally well. This shows that the phonological loop is independent from the visuospatial sketchpad. b) Subjects in Condition 1 did better. Saying "la, la, la,..." took some of the capacity of short-term memory. Performance on the mental subtraction task decreased while saying "la, la, la,..." because there was less memory capacity to devote to it. c) Subjects in Condition 1 did better. Saying "la, la, la,..." forced the subjects to respond more slowly. This increased the probability that the mental image of the figure would decay in memory. d) Subjects in Condition 2 did better. Saying "la, la, la,..." prevented them from verbally categorizing B in Figure 2 as "candy" and this made it easier to think of "fish" after subtracting B' from B in Figure When memory span for digits was measured in different cultures, it was found that native English speakers have slightly larger digit spans than did native speakers of Welsh 1. How do cognitive psychologists explain this fact? a) The digits, 0 1,..., 8, 9, take longer to pronounce in Welsh than in English. 1 The Welsh language is spoken in Wales, a part of the United Kingdom on the western edge of England. The Welsh language is different from English.

3 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 3 b) Less emphasis is placed on arithmetic in Welsh education than in English or American education. c) In general, the Welsh people have slightly smaller working memories than English-speaking people of the same age. d) Almost every Welsh person carries a calculator or other computing device for doing elementary arithmetic. This is not true of English speakers in England or the U.S. 10. Lee Brooks' (1968) image scanning experiment had four conditions: (Diagram or Sentence Stimuli) (Pointing or Vocal Response) Mean response time per condition is displayed in the following table. Response Mode Type of Stimulus Pointing Vocal Diagrams 28.2 > 11.3 Sentences 9.8 < 13.8 The dependent variable was response time measured in seconds. How does working memory theory explain the fact that responses in the diagram/pointing condition were slower than response in the diagram/vocal condition (28.2 > 11.3), but the sentence/pointing condition was faster than the sentence/vocal condition (9.8 < 13.8)? a) A vocal response is highly practiced and automatic. The pointing response was not highly practiced, and it was not automatic. Similarly, reading a sentence is a highly practiced skill whereas maintaining a diagram in working memory is not. Consequently, responses were faster in conditions where the cognitive processing was more practiced and automatic than in conditions where it was either less practiced, or less automatic, or both. b) In general, it takes less time to process the information in a sentence than an equivalent amount of information in a diagram. Similarly, it takes less time to produce a vocal response than a pointing response. These two effects interact to produce the observed pattern of response. c) Processing the diagram stimulus and the pointing response both require that information be translated from a visual representation to a verbal representation. This takes time. When the stimulus is a diagram and the response is vocal, only the stimulus has to be translated to a verbal representation, so the response is faster. A similar analysis explains the response times for sentence stimuli. d) The diagram/pointing condition creates competition for cognitive resources in VSP. The sentence/vocal condition creates competition for cognitive resources in PL. The competition for cognitive resources slows down the response relative to the other conditions that do not create a competition for cognitive resources in the same WM component. 11. Which of the following is an example of proactive interference? a) I have more trouble remembering events that happened last week than events that happened yesterday. b) It is easier for me to remember the results of a famous psychology experiment than to remember the results of a famous physics experiment. c) Suppose that at the beginning of the quarter I learn the names of 5 male students in Psych 355. I find that it is easier to learn the name of a 6th student if that student is female than if that student is male.

4 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 4 d) I feel that I have a better memory for a spectacular event, e.g., the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, than for a less striking event, e.g., the 2017 election of Jenny Durkan as Mayor of Seattle. 12. Using single cell recordings, Funihashi found neurons in monkey frontal cortex that were active while the monkey retained information about the location of a visual target. These neurons were specific to particular locations in the visual field and they would maintain an increased level of activity even after the target stimulus had been removed (during this period, the monkey is waiting to respond). What is the main implication of this finding for the theory of memory? a) The phonological loop (PL) and visuospatial sketchpad (VSP) are separate components of working memory (WM). b) The "where" pathway (dorsal pathway) processes spatial information. c) The neural activity was indicative of the inhibition of the response (an eye movement to the location at which the target appeared). d) The neural activity was indicative of spatial rehearsal, i.e., the monkey was actively maintaining a memory of the target location. 13. Chase and Simon (1973) studied the memory of chess novices and experts for positions of chess pieces on a chess board. Although experts generally have a far better memory for chess positions than do novices, they found that the novices performed as well or better than the experts when asked to recall random arrangements of chess pieces on the chess board. The random arrangements included arrangements that could not possibly occur in a real game of chess. Why did novices do as well as experts when the pieces were arranged at random? a) A random arrangement of chess pieces is more surprising and therefore more memorable. b) A random arrangement of chess pieces is more irregular and therefore more memorable. c) A random arrangement of chess pieces lacks the kind of structure that experts can use to chunk the positions in the arrangement. d) A random arrangement of chess pieces requires a deeper level of processing to encode the positions. 14. Which of the following would be an example of a procedural memory? a) Remembering what you want to buy at the grocery store. b) Remembering how to ride a bicycle. c) Remembering the menu items that someone has ordered (assuming that you are a waiter or waitress). d) Remembering that diesel fuel costs less per gallon than gasoline. 15. Which of the following is an example of episodic memory. a) I remember talking to a friend on the phone last night. b) I remember that Washington, D.C. is the capital of the U.S.A. c) I remember that my mother was born on June 20, d) I remember that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated while attending a play at a theater. 16. In a recognition memory experiment, participants study a list of words and then are presented with a test list that contains both old words (previously studied) and new words (not previously studied). The task, of course, is to decide which of the words on the test list are old words. Suppose a participant sees a word that she believes is an old word, but she can t recall details about her

5 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 5 experience studying the word (e.g., can t remember what she thought of when she saw the word, can t remember what other words were presented around that word, etc.). Using the remember/know distinction in recognition memory, we can say that: a) she remembers studying the word and knows she studied the word. b) she remembers studying the word but does not know that she studied the word. c) she does not remember studying the word but she knows that she studied the word. d) she does not remember studying the word and she does not know that she studied the word. 17. Suppose you are studying the memory processes that produce the serial position curve. You have subjects try to recall a list of 20 randomly chosen one-syllable words. You find that the recency effect does not occur if you ask subjects to count backwards for 30 second immediately following the last word in the list. What is the best explanation for why counting backwards prevents the occurrence of a recency effect? a) Counting backwards prevents the central executive from allocating attention to the words at the end of the list. b) Counting backwards produces retroactive interference that impairs memory for words at the end of the list. c) Counting backwards prevents retrieval from LTM after finishing the counting backwards task. d) Counting backwards prevents rehearsal of items on the list after its presentation is over, and these words have usually not been stored (encoded) in LTM. 18. Cognitive neuropsychologists regard the finding of a double dissociation between short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) as important because it shows that: a) The functions of STM and LTM are based on different neural mechanisms which act independently. b) STM precedes LTM in the encoding of stimulus information. c) Memories last much longer in LTM than in STM. d) The capacity of LTM is much greater than the capacity of STM. 19. To control his epilepsy, the patient HM had brain surgery that removed his hippocampi. After his surgery, it was discovered that HM could no longer form new episodic memories. Which of the following best describes what was the source of HM's memory problems after surgery? a) HM could no longer retrieve memories from LTM, even well established memories of his childhood. b) HM could no longer transfer information from working memory to long-term memory. His ability to encode new information was severely impaired. c) HM could no longer retain information in working memory, e.g., he could not retain even 2 or 3 digits in working memory. d) HM had a deficit of semantic memory - he could no longer remember the meanings of the concepts on which memories are based. 20. Which of the following retrieval cues will produce the best performance in a cued recall test of memory? a) Phonologically related cues

6 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 6 b) Words that are visually similar to the target words, e.g., the word HERD is visually similar to the word BEND so it will serve as an effective retrieval cue for BEND. c) Semantically related cues that the subject generated himself or herself while studying the test items. d) Semantically related cues that were generated by a different subject who previously has performed well on the memory task. 21. Which of the following is evidence that implicit memory and explicit memory are based on different memory systems? a) Suppose that patients with Korsakoff's syndrome and age-matched normal individuals are asked to study a list of words. Later the patients with Korsakoff syndrome do much worse than the normal individuals at recalling the words, but they perform as well as the normal individuals on a word fragment completion task with these same words. b) Suppose that patients with Korsakoff's syndrome and age-matched normal individuals are asked to learn a new skill like drawing with their left hand (assuming that they are right-handed). The Korsakoff patients and the normal individuals are equally capable of learning this skill. c) Suppose that patients with Korsakoff's syndrome and age-matched normal individuals are shown a list of 20 random words at the rate of 1 word per five seconds. After viewing these words, the subjects are asked to recall as many of words as possible. The serial position curve of the Korsakoff patients does not display a recency effect, whereas the serial position curve of the normal individuals does display a recency effect. d) Suppose that patients with Korsakoff's syndrome and age-matched normal individuals are asked to recall many events in their lives. Assuming that all subjects are older than 50 years old, the memories of the normal individuals are found to have a much larger reminiscence bump than the Korsakoff patients. 22. The following list associates a model of memory consolidation with a hypothesis about the role of the hippocampus. Three of these pairs are false in the sense that the hypothesis is not part of the memory model. The remaining pair is true - the hypothesis is indeed part of the memory model. In the case of the true pair, the memory model may also contain additional hypotheses that are not mentioned in the pair. Which pair is true? a) Standard Model of Consolidation the hippocampus is involved in the encoding and retrieval of all episodic memories b) Standard Model of Consolidation the hippocampus is only involved in the early stages of encoding and retrieval of an episodic memory, but not in later stages when a memory is thoroughly consolidated. c) Multiple Trace Model of Consolidation the hippocampus is only involved in the encoding and retrieval of semantic memories, not episodic memories. d) Multiple Trace Model of Consolidation the hippocampus is only involved in the early stages of encoding and retrieval of an episodic memory, but not in later stages when a memory is thoroughly consolidated. 23. Which statement is a central aspect of the depth of processing hypothesis? a) Information enters memory by passing through a number of levels, beginning with sensory memory, then short-term memory, then long-term memory.

7 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 7 b) Events that are repeated many times can influence our behavior, even after we have forgotten the original events. c) Deeper processing at the time of encoding will produce better recall at a later time. d) People who respond emotionally to a stimulus are more likely to remember it at a later time. 24. Suppose you want to study some information with the goal of remembering it at some future time. For example, suppose you are learning about misinformation effects in eyewitness memory. Which of the following is the most effective way to study the information? a) Focus on the material you are studying while trying to avoid any extraneous thoughts. b) Try to memorize the relevant information. c) Study the notes that were made by another student who is doing very well in your class. d) Generate associations between the material your are studying and other ideas that you find interesting or personally relevant. 25. Which of the following best describes the effects of mental imagery on memory for facts? a) Creating a mental image that is related to a fact enhances memory for the fact, AND creating a bizarre image is even more effective at enhancing memory. b) Creating a mental image that is related to a fact enhances memory for the fact, BUT creating a bizarre image is less effective than creating a meaningful image. c) Creating a mental image that is related to a fact enhances memory for the fact, AND creating a bizarre image is also effective, but not more effective at enhancing memory. d) Creating a mental image that is related to a fact enhances memory for the fact, AND creating a bizarre image tends to cause strong but distorted (inaccurate) memories. 26. Nader et al. (2000) trained a rat to produce a fear response (freezing) in response to a tone by pairing the tone with an electric shock. Normally this training causes a rat to freeze whenever it hears the tone even without pairing it with an electric shock. Nader et al. found that if they played the tone for the rat on a later day and injected the rat with anisomycin shortly after hearing the tone, then on future occasions the rat would no longer freeze to a tone in the absence of a shock. Why does this occur? a. Anisomycin blocks the freezing response, even days or weeks after the last injection. b. Anisomycin breaks the connection between an conditioned stimulus (tone), the unconditioned stimulus (electric shock) and the response (freezing). c. The conditioned response to the tone is a form of implicit memory. Anisomycin blocks the formation of implicit memories but not the formation of explicit memories. d. The tone caused the rat to reactivate the connection between the tone, the electric shock and the freezing response, and the injection of anisomycin prevented the reconsolidation of this memory while the memory was in the fragile, reactivated state. 27. The clinical psychologist, Alain Brunet, has developed a therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is based on the modern theory of memory retrieval. It is known that the drug, propranolol, reduces the experience of stress and anxiety and it can diminish the development of stress responses if administered immediately following a traumatic experience. Which of the following is the best description of Brunet's procedure and why it is thought to be beneficial to people who suffer from PTSD?

8 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 8 a) Brunet has found that injections of propranolol at three month intervals greatly reduces the anxiety and stress experienced by patients with PTSD. b) Feelings of anxiety and stress serve as retrieval cues for episodic memories of traumatic experiences. By injecting patients with propranolol whenever they feel anxiety or stress, the patients feel less anxiety and stress and, consequently, they have fewer episodes where the traumatic experiences are recalled. c) In Brunet's therapy, PTSD patients retrieve memories of their traumatic experiences by listening to descriptions of those experiences. Shortly after retrieving these traumatic memories, the patients are injected with propranolol. This procedure reduces the stress and anxiety that PTSD patients feel on future occasions when remembering traumatic experiences because it weakens the association between the memories and the emotional responses. d) In Brunet's therapy, PTSD patients are first injected with propranolol, and then they are asked to recall their traumatic experience. Typically, the patients have difficulty retrieving the traumatic memories because the propranolol blocks the retrieval of strong negative emotions. Subsequent to the treatment, retrieval of unwanted traumatic memories are triggered less frequently because the therapy has weakened the strength of retrieval cues for the traumatic memories. 28. Recapitulation and reactivation are two different names for the same cognitive process. What is this cognitive process? a) The pattern of neural activity that occurs when a person recalls a prior experience is similar to the pattern of neural activity that occurred during the original experience. Reactivation refers to the activation of the initial pattern of neural activity when recalling a past experience. b) When a similar stimulus is presented just prior to a target stimulus, e.g., the word "doctor" is presented a half second before the word "nurse," the first stimulus activates similar brain areas to those activated by the second stimulus. Reactivation refers to the tendency of similar stimuli to activate similar brain areas. c) Reactivation refers to the process by which the hippocampus stores a pattern of current brain activity in order to form a long-term memory. d) Reactivation refers to the increased sensitivity of a neuron when it repeatedly receives neural transmitters from an adjacent neuron. 29. While taking an exam, you are more likely to recall information if you studied for the exam in a similar physical environment than if you studied for it in a dissimilar physical environment. This phenomenon is called. a) state-dependency b) mental imagery c) encoding specificity d) depth of processing 30. Schrauf & Rubin (1998) found that the reminiscence bump was shifted into the mid-30's for people who immigrated to the United States at age Assuming that immigration results in a period of rapid change, followed by a period of stability, this finding supports which hypothesis: a) self-image hypothesis b) the cognitive hypothesis c) the cultural life script hypothesis

9 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 9 d) the incremental forgetting hypothesis 31. Knowledge of the typical characteristics of a common experience, e.g., shopping in a department store, is called a for that experience. a) subroutine b) template c) gestalt d) schema 32. In the Deese/Roediger/McDermott paradigm, subjects are presented with a list of words the majority of which are semantically related, e.g., "DRIVE", "HEADLIGHTS", "GASOLINE", "TRAFFIC", "TULIP", "STREET", "BREAKS",... If subjects are given a list of words like the ones shown here (most of the words are related to driving a car), what would be a common intrusion error and what would be a common omission error? a) Intrusion error: Recall "GASOLINE". Omission error: Fail to recall "OIL". b) Intrusion error: Recall "JUICE". Omission error: Fail to recall "GASOLINE". c) Intrusion error: Recall "TULIP". Omission error: Fail to recall "CAR". d) Intrusion error: Recall "CAR". Omission error: Fail to recall "TULIP". 33. Research on flashbulbs memories supports which of the following claims: a) Flashbulb memories are like photographs: once encoded, they do not change b) Flashbulb memories differ from everyday memories because the details of flashbulb memories are remembered accurately for a much longer period of time. c) People believe that their memories are more accurate for shocking events than for everyday events, even though psychological research finds that both kinds of events are forgotten or distorted at about the same rate d) When an event occurs, people do not often realize that the event will eventually become a flashbulb memory; as time passes, the memory consolidates and the memory acquires greater detail. 34. Suppose that you see Joe X on campus once in awhile but you haven't noticed him because there hasn't been any reason to pay special attention to him. Later on, you are a witness to a robbery for which Joe X is a suspect. You pick Joe X out of a line up as the person who committed the crime. Later still, it is proved that Joe X could not possibly have been present at the robbery. Which of the following is the most likely cause of your mistaken identification? a) You have committed a schema-consistent intrusion error because you have seen him before. b) Your previous contact with Joe X made his face more familiar than the other faces in the line up. You made the mistaken inference that Joe X's face was familiar because it was the face of the robber. c) The questions you were asked about the robbery mislead you into thinking that the robber was someone you had seen before. d) Joe X fits with your concept of a robber because you have had multple previous contacts with him (as in the Roediger/McDermott/Deese paradigm). 35. Suppose that an eyewitness was present at the scene of a crime; later this witness will be asked to remember what they saw at the crime. Chan et al. (2009) found that giving a cued recall test to an

10 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 10 eyewitness increased the susceptibility of the witness to misinformation. In other words, an eyewitness is more likely to "remember" the misinformation as if it were part of the true memory of the crime if the witness takes a cued recall test just prior to receiving the misinformation. Which of the following is the most plausible explanation for why this happens? a) The cued recall test causes the eyewitness to retrieve memories about the crime that was witnessed. When memories are retrieved, they become vulnerable to change, increasing the chance that the misinformation will be integrated with other memories for the crime. b) The cued recall test strengthens the association between retrieval cues and memories of the crime, thereby increasing the likelihood that misinformation will also be retrieved at a future time. c) The presentation of misinformation following the cued recall test strengthens the implicit memory for the misinformation more than the explicit, episodic memory for the misinformation. When the subject is tested later, then subject retrieves the misinformation because it has a strong implicit memory. d) The cued recall test primes the false information that follows it, thereby making it seem more plausible. 36. A line-up is a method for asking an eyewitness whether he or she recognizes the person that he or she previously saw at a crime. For example, a group of 7 similar-looking men could be presented to the eyewitness. The witness would be asked whether he or she sees the culprit among these 7 men. Psychological research has revealed that line-ups are unsatisfactory in the following way: a) If the culprit is NOT among the 7 men in the line-up, the line-up increases the chance that the witness will mistakenly identify one of the 7 men in the line-up as the culprit. b) If the culprit is NOT among the 7 men in the line-up, the line-up increases the chance that the witness will say that he or she does not see the culprit among these 7 men. c) If the culprit is actually among the 7 men in the line-up, the line-up increases the chance that the witness will say that he or she does not see the culprit among these 7 men. d) If the culprit is actually among the 7 men in the line-up, the line-up increases the chance that the witness will identify someone different from the culprit. 37. Based on what has been learned about bias in eyewitness testimony, what is the best method for a witness to identify a suspect? ("Best method" means fewest mistaken identifications with most correct identifications.) a) a line-up (the suspect is placed in a group of other similar-looking men or women; the group is presented to the witness) b) a show-up (only the one suspect is shown to the witness) c) a sequential show-up (the suspect is placed in a group of other similar-looking men or women; the group is presented one at a time to the witness - Goldstein calls this a "sequential presentation" or a "sequential lineup.") d) a photo line-up (a photo of the suspect is placed in a group with photos of other similar-looking men or women; the group of photos is presented to the witness) 38. Sometimes people will say "I have a terrible short-term memory" as a comment on the fact that they have forgotten what happened earlier that same day. From the standpoint of current cognitive theories, what is erroneous about this comment?

11 File = D:\p355\mid2c.a-key.p355.spr18.docm 11 a) People have better short-term memories than they think they do; they typically don't know how to use their own short-term memories effectively. b) People have a biased perception of the effectiveness of short-term memory because they notice when they fail to remember something, but they do not notice when they successfully remember something. c) Memory for prior experiences would improve substantially if people actively rehearsed the information that they will later want to remember. d) Failure to recall what happened earlier that day is NOT a failure to retain information in shortterm memory; rather it is a failure of encoding or retrieval from long-term memory. 39. Emma studied Spanish for three years in high school. Now Emma is taking a course in conversational Italian. Italian is related to Spanish and is moderately similar in sound, vocabulary and grammar. Emma finds that she often has trouble learning Italian phrases because she is confused by similar Spanish expressions that are not quite identical. A memory psychologist would say that her difficulties learning Italian are an example of what memory phenomenon? a) transfer of training b) retroactive interference c) proactive interference d) phonological similarity effect