Unit 5-Cognitive Psychology

The spacing effect means that

• Learning causes a reduction in the size of the synaptic gap between certain neurons.

• Delaying retrieval until memory has consolidated improves recall.

• Retention is improved when encoding and retrieval are separated by no more than 1 hour.

• Distributed study yields better retention than cramming.

Recalling something that you had once merely imagined happening as something you had directly experienced best illustrates

• Mood-congruent memory.

• Source amnesia.

• The self-reference effect.

• Proactive interference.

In relation to ground beef, consumers respond more positively to an ad describing it as “75 percent lean” than to one referring to its “25 percent fat” content. This is an example of

• Mental set.

• Overconfidence.

• Confirmation bias.

• The framing effect.

After finding her old combination lock, Janice can’t remember its combination because she keeps confusing it with the combination of her new lock. She is experiencing

• Encoding failure

• Storage failure

• Retroactive interference

• Proactive interference

At your high school reunion you cannot remember the last name of your homeroom teacher. Your failure to remember is most likely the result of

• Retrieval failure

• Encoding failure

• Proactive failure

• Storage failure

Confirmation bias refers to the tendency to

• cling to one's initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.

• search randomly through alternative solutions when problem solving.

• look for information that is consistent with one's beliefs.

• allow preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning.

The misinformation effect provides evidence that memory

• may be reconstructed during recall according to how questions are framed.

• is constructed during encoding.

• is highly resistant to misleading information.

• is unchanging once established.

Our short-term memory span is approximately ________ items.

• 10

• 2

• 5

• 7

The first thing Karen did when she discovered that she had misplaced her keys was to re-create in her mind the day's events. That she had little difficulty in doing so illustrates

• visual encoding.

• semantic encoding.

• automatic processing.

• effortful processing.

According to the serial position effect, when recalling a list of words you should have the greatest difficulty with those

• in the middle of the list.

• at the end and in the middle of the list.

• at the beginning of the list.

• at the end of the list.