C5. P7

Question 1

What is encoding failure?

Answer 1

An inability to retrieve information because it was either never encoded into long-term memory or was very weakly encoded in long-term memory

Question 2

What is storage decay?

Answer 2

The loss of information in memory due to the passage of time

Question 3

Who did the first studies into the rate of forgetting?

Answer 3

Hermann Ebbinghaus

Question 4

Summarize Ebbinghaus’ study.

Answer 4

He taught himself a list of nonsense syllables and try to recite as many as possible. Then he would re-read it and try to recite it from memory

Question 5

What is overlearning?

Answer 5

If we continue to rehearse information repeatedly even after we’ve initially learned it we lose less and less information

Question 6

What did Ebbinghaus find that made him remember things longer?

Answer 6

If he spaced out his learning and review trial, he would retain more information for longer periods of time

Question 7

What is retrieval failure?

Answer 7

The inability to access information in memory that the individual has consolidated in memory

Question 8

What is the Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon?

Answer 8

One is explicitly aware that he or she knows a given piece of information and, at the same time, is unable to call this information into explicit awareness or use this information

Question 9

What is interference theory?

Answer 9

The activity of content in one part of memory can interfere with the activation and recall of other information

Question 10

What is proactive interference?

Answer 10

When one is unable to retrieve recently learned information due to past information which has been strongly consolidated

Question 11

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 11

When recently learned information prevents the retrieval of previously learned information

Question 12

What is amnesia?

Answer 12

A partial or complete loss of memory

Question 13

What is retrograde amnesia?

Answer 13

The inability to recall events that occurred prior to the onset of amnesia, most likely to occur when the frontal cortex or temporal lobe is damaged

Question 14

What is Ribot’s law?

Answer 14

More recent memories occurring from the time just before retrograde amnesia begins are most likely to be lost as compared to distant memories

Question 15

What is anterograde amnesia?

Answer 15

A complete or partial inability to form new memories

Question 16

What can cause anterograde amnesia?

Answer 16

Excessive alcohol

Question 17

When does source amnesia occur?

Answer 17

When an individual remembers information but can’t recall or mistakenly recalls the source from which the information was learned

Question 18

What is egocentric bias

Answer 18

When we recall the past in a manner that enhances our present self-view or is self-serving in some manner

Question 19

Describe Keuler and Safer’s study.

Answer 19

Keuler and Safer had a small sample of graduate students rate how anxious they were about an exam the day before the exam. A month later, they were asked to recall how anxious they were. Those who had already found out they passed the exam gave far higher ratings

Question 20

What is the high school grades study?

Answer 20

Bahrick asked university students to remember the grades they had obtained for high school classes. People tended to recall doing slightly better than they actually did

Question 21

What is repression?

Answer 21

A form of implicitly motivated retrieval failure in which the individual’s “unconscious” prevents awareness of anxiety-provoking content in memory (Freud)