PSYCH 375 Exam 2 Questions and Answers Latest Update 2025/2026
Distinguish between declarative (or explicit) memory, non-declarative (or implicit) memory, and
the subtypes of each. - Answers Explicit memory: Conscious recall of facts/events.
- subtypes: episodic (personal experiences), semantic (general knowledge).
- brain areas: hippocampus, medial temporal lobe, prefrontal cortex.
Implicit memory: Unconscious memory expressed through performance.
- subtypes: procedural (motor skills), priming (faster recognition from prior exposure), classical
conditioning (learning via associations), habituation (decreased response), sensitization
(increased response).
- brain areas: basal ganglia, cerebellum, amygdala, motor cortex.
Provide examples of each type of memory listed above. - Answers Episodic Memory:
Remembering the first time you rode a bike.
Semantic Memory: Recalling the capital of Japan is Tokyo.
Procedural Memory: Tying your shoes without thinking.
Priming: Reading the word "yellow" makes you recognize the word "banana" faster.
Classical Conditioning: Getting hungry when hearing a lunchtime bell at school.
Habituation: Becoming less startled by a repeated loud noise over time.
Sensitization: Becoming more irritated by a dripping faucet the longer it continues.
Define primacy effect, recency effect, and the serial-position effect. - Answers Primacy Effect:
The tendency to better recall items presented at the beginning of a list.
Recency Effect: The tendency to better recall items presented at the end of a list.
Serial-Position Effect: The phenomenon where people tend to recall the first and last items in a
list more easily than the middle items.
Describe what may account for each effect listed above, and how you could experimentally test
for the effects. - Answers Primacy Effect: Items at the beginning of a list are rehearsed more
often, allowing them to enter long-term memory. Earlier items face less interference from new
information.
Recency Effect: Items at the end of the list are still in short-term memory at the time of recall.
,They haven't yet been pushed out by new information.
Serial-Position Effect: Combination of primacy effect (long term) and recency effect (short term),
middle items suffer from neither advantage and are more likely to be forgotten.
Explain what it means to engage in shallow processing versus deep processing (and the
degrees from shallow to deep), provide some examples of each, and describe how thinking
about the meaning of a word helps encode the information, if at all. - Answers Shallow
Processing: Processing that focuses on surface-level features (appearance or sound), not
meaning. Leads to weaker memory traces and poor long-term recall. (ex: structural encoding:
judging whether a word is written in uppercase letters, phonemic encoding: focusing on the
sound of a word)
Deep Processing: Processing that involves semantic encoding, or thinking about the meaning of
the information. Leads to stronger, more durable memory traces and better long-term recall. (ex:
thinking about whether a word fits into a sentence, linking a word to personal experience,
categorizing or analyzing relationships).
Degrees of processing:
1. Shallow --> Structural --> Visual appearance --> "Is the word in uppercase?"
2. Moderate --> Phonemic --> Sound of the word --> "Does it rhyme with another word?"
3. Deep --> Semantic --> Meaning -->"Is it a type of food?" or "How would you use this in a
sentence?"
Semantic (deep) processing activates more elaborate cognitive associations. This creates
multiple retrieval cues, which improves encoding into long-term memory. For example, if you
relate the word "ocean" to swimming, beach vacations, and marine life, you're building a rich
network of memory traces.
Explain how your intention to learn determines whether something gets encoded, if at all, and
describe the experiment that provides evidence for this claim. - Answers Intention to learn can
help, but it's not essential. What truly determines whether information is encoded is the depth of
processing—not just the goal to remember it. Hyde & Jenkins (1973) both semantic processing
groups (pleasantness judgment)—with or without the intention to memorize—remembered
significantly more words than the shallow group. Intent to learn added little to no extra benefit if
the processing was already deep.
, Describe how different types of repetition affect memory encoding. - Answers Maintenance
Rehearsal (Rote Repetition): Repeating information over and over without thinking about its
meaning. Helps keep information in short-term memory, but does not strongly encode it into
long-term memory. Ex: Repeating a phone number to yourself until you dial it.
Elaborative Rehearsal: Repeating information while adding meaning, making connections, or
integrating it with existing knowledge. Leads to strong long-term encoding. Ex: Relating the
word "photosynthesis" to your knowledge of plants and sunlight.
Massed Repetition (Cramming): Repeating or studying information in a single, condensed
session. May help with short-term retention, but often results in poor long-term recall. Ex:
Studying for an exam the night before.
Distributed Repetition (Spaced Practice): Repeating or reviewing information across spaced
intervals over time. Stronger long-term retention due to better consolidation. Studying 20
minutes a day over several days.
Varied Repetition (Interleaving): Mixing different types of problems or topics during study
sessions rather than repeating the same one. Promotes deeper understanding and stronger
encoding by encouraging flexible thinking. Ex: Mixing math problems of different types instead
of practicing one kind repeatedly.
Describe how emotion affects memory encoding, and how you can study emotion's effects on
memory. - Answers Emotional events are remembered better than neutral ones because they
grab your attention and make your brain work harder to store the memory. The amygdala, a part
of the brain that handles emotions, helps strengthen these memories. You usually remember
the important parts of an emotional event clearly, but you might forget or mix up smaller details.
They use brain scans (like fMRI) to see which parts of the brain light up when people remember
emotional things. The amygdala shows more activity during emotional memory tasks.
Explain the relationship between accuracy and confidence for flashbulb memories compared to
everyday memories. - Answers Flashbulb memories: research shows that while flashbulb
memories feel accurate, they are not always more accurate than regular memories, confidence
stays high even if the memory changes over time.
Everyday memories: confidence is usually lower, and people are more aware that they might
forget or be wrong. Accuracy may be similar to flashbulb memories, or even better over time in
Distinguish between declarative (or explicit) memory, non-declarative (or implicit) memory, and
the subtypes of each. - Answers Explicit memory: Conscious recall of facts/events.
- subtypes: episodic (personal experiences), semantic (general knowledge).
- brain areas: hippocampus, medial temporal lobe, prefrontal cortex.
Implicit memory: Unconscious memory expressed through performance.
- subtypes: procedural (motor skills), priming (faster recognition from prior exposure), classical
conditioning (learning via associations), habituation (decreased response), sensitization
(increased response).
- brain areas: basal ganglia, cerebellum, amygdala, motor cortex.
Provide examples of each type of memory listed above. - Answers Episodic Memory:
Remembering the first time you rode a bike.
Semantic Memory: Recalling the capital of Japan is Tokyo.
Procedural Memory: Tying your shoes without thinking.
Priming: Reading the word "yellow" makes you recognize the word "banana" faster.
Classical Conditioning: Getting hungry when hearing a lunchtime bell at school.
Habituation: Becoming less startled by a repeated loud noise over time.
Sensitization: Becoming more irritated by a dripping faucet the longer it continues.
Define primacy effect, recency effect, and the serial-position effect. - Answers Primacy Effect:
The tendency to better recall items presented at the beginning of a list.
Recency Effect: The tendency to better recall items presented at the end of a list.
Serial-Position Effect: The phenomenon where people tend to recall the first and last items in a
list more easily than the middle items.
Describe what may account for each effect listed above, and how you could experimentally test
for the effects. - Answers Primacy Effect: Items at the beginning of a list are rehearsed more
often, allowing them to enter long-term memory. Earlier items face less interference from new
information.
Recency Effect: Items at the end of the list are still in short-term memory at the time of recall.
,They haven't yet been pushed out by new information.
Serial-Position Effect: Combination of primacy effect (long term) and recency effect (short term),
middle items suffer from neither advantage and are more likely to be forgotten.
Explain what it means to engage in shallow processing versus deep processing (and the
degrees from shallow to deep), provide some examples of each, and describe how thinking
about the meaning of a word helps encode the information, if at all. - Answers Shallow
Processing: Processing that focuses on surface-level features (appearance or sound), not
meaning. Leads to weaker memory traces and poor long-term recall. (ex: structural encoding:
judging whether a word is written in uppercase letters, phonemic encoding: focusing on the
sound of a word)
Deep Processing: Processing that involves semantic encoding, or thinking about the meaning of
the information. Leads to stronger, more durable memory traces and better long-term recall. (ex:
thinking about whether a word fits into a sentence, linking a word to personal experience,
categorizing or analyzing relationships).
Degrees of processing:
1. Shallow --> Structural --> Visual appearance --> "Is the word in uppercase?"
2. Moderate --> Phonemic --> Sound of the word --> "Does it rhyme with another word?"
3. Deep --> Semantic --> Meaning -->"Is it a type of food?" or "How would you use this in a
sentence?"
Semantic (deep) processing activates more elaborate cognitive associations. This creates
multiple retrieval cues, which improves encoding into long-term memory. For example, if you
relate the word "ocean" to swimming, beach vacations, and marine life, you're building a rich
network of memory traces.
Explain how your intention to learn determines whether something gets encoded, if at all, and
describe the experiment that provides evidence for this claim. - Answers Intention to learn can
help, but it's not essential. What truly determines whether information is encoded is the depth of
processing—not just the goal to remember it. Hyde & Jenkins (1973) both semantic processing
groups (pleasantness judgment)—with or without the intention to memorize—remembered
significantly more words than the shallow group. Intent to learn added little to no extra benefit if
the processing was already deep.
, Describe how different types of repetition affect memory encoding. - Answers Maintenance
Rehearsal (Rote Repetition): Repeating information over and over without thinking about its
meaning. Helps keep information in short-term memory, but does not strongly encode it into
long-term memory. Ex: Repeating a phone number to yourself until you dial it.
Elaborative Rehearsal: Repeating information while adding meaning, making connections, or
integrating it with existing knowledge. Leads to strong long-term encoding. Ex: Relating the
word "photosynthesis" to your knowledge of plants and sunlight.
Massed Repetition (Cramming): Repeating or studying information in a single, condensed
session. May help with short-term retention, but often results in poor long-term recall. Ex:
Studying for an exam the night before.
Distributed Repetition (Spaced Practice): Repeating or reviewing information across spaced
intervals over time. Stronger long-term retention due to better consolidation. Studying 20
minutes a day over several days.
Varied Repetition (Interleaving): Mixing different types of problems or topics during study
sessions rather than repeating the same one. Promotes deeper understanding and stronger
encoding by encouraging flexible thinking. Ex: Mixing math problems of different types instead
of practicing one kind repeatedly.
Describe how emotion affects memory encoding, and how you can study emotion's effects on
memory. - Answers Emotional events are remembered better than neutral ones because they
grab your attention and make your brain work harder to store the memory. The amygdala, a part
of the brain that handles emotions, helps strengthen these memories. You usually remember
the important parts of an emotional event clearly, but you might forget or mix up smaller details.
They use brain scans (like fMRI) to see which parts of the brain light up when people remember
emotional things. The amygdala shows more activity during emotional memory tasks.
Explain the relationship between accuracy and confidence for flashbulb memories compared to
everyday memories. - Answers Flashbulb memories: research shows that while flashbulb
memories feel accurate, they are not always more accurate than regular memories, confidence
stays high even if the memory changes over time.
Everyday memories: confidence is usually lower, and people are more aware that they might
forget or be wrong. Accuracy may be similar to flashbulb memories, or even better over time in
