- Which of the following is an example of a memory that is primarily non-declarative (implicit)?
Answer: The ability to ride a bicycle without consciously thinking about balancing.
Declarative (explicit) memory involves the conscious recall of facts (semantic) and events (episodic). Choices A, B, and C are all examples of declarative memory. Non-declarative (implicit) memory operates without conscious awareness and includes procedural skills like riding a bicycle. The knowledge of 'how to' ride is stored implicitly.
- A patient diagnosed with semantic dementia shows a progressive loss of factual knowledge, such as the names of famous people or the functions of common objects. However, she can still vividly recall her wedding day from 40 years ago. This pattern suggests a significant degradation of her semantic memory with a relative preservation of her:
Answer: episodic memory.
This clinical case illustrates a dissociation between the two main types of declarative memory. Semantic memory, which stores general knowledge about the world, is impaired. Episodic memory, which stores personal, autobiographical events, is relatively intact. This demonstrates that these two systems are functionally and neurologically distinct.
- An experienced chef can chop vegetables at high speed while simultaneously monitoring multiple pans on the stove and conversing with a colleague. The chef's ability to perform the physical act of chopping with minimal conscious attention is best explained by the consolidation of the skill into:
Answer: long-term procedural memory.
Procedural memory is the system responsible for encoding, storing, and retrieving skills and motor actions that can be performed automatically, without conscious thought. The chef's expert chopping skill is a classic example of a task that has become automatized through practice and is stored as a procedural memory, freeing up working memory resources for other tasks.
- A research participant is asked to remember the letters 'F, K, L, R, S, T' over a short delay. During the delay, the participant is instructed to repeat the syllable 'la' over and over again out loud. This technique, known as articulatory suppression, is expected to impair recall by primarily disrupting the operation of the:
Answer: phonological loop's rehearsal mechanism.
The phonological loop is believed to maintain verbal information in working memory through a process of subvocal rehearsal (repeating it to oneself). Articulatory suppression occupies the articulatory control process, preventing it from being used to rehearse the target letters. This specifically interferes with the phonological loop, leading to faster decay of the memory trace.
- Repeating a password mentally until use, versus linking it to a personal date to remember it later, compares:
Answer: WM maintenance vs LTM encoding
Repeating a password mentally keeps it active in working memory until you use it, which is WM maintenance. Linking it to a personal date helps transfer it into long-term memory, which is LTM encoding. The tempting trap is semantic vs episodic memory, but that describes types of long-term knowledge, not the active process of holding versus storing information.
- The knowledge that Paris is the capital of France is an example of ________ memory, while the knowledge of how to sign your name is an example of ________ memory.
Answer: semantic; procedural
Knowing a general fact about the world, such as a country's capital, is a classic example of semantic memory, which is a form of explicit (declarative) memory. Knowing how to perform a learned motor skill, such as writing your signature, is a classic example of procedural memory, which is a form of implicit (non-declarative) memory.
- To solve the mental arithmetic problem (4 x 13) - 7, a person must hold the intermediate product (52) in mind while performing the final subtraction. This act of temporarily holding and manipulating information is a core function of:
Answer: working memory.
Working memory is responsible for the temporary storage and manipulation of information necessary for complex cognitive tasks like reasoning, comprehension, and learning. Mental arithmetic requires actively holding numbers (storage) while applying mathematical rules (manipulation), which is the defining characteristic of working memory.
- An eyewitness is asked to describe a suspect's face. The witness must retrieve a visual representation from long-term memory and then translate that mental image into a sequence of verbal statements. This translation process most critically involves the coordinated action of which two working memory components?
Answer: The visuospatial sketchpad and the phonological loop
Recalling the suspect's face engages the visuospatial sketchpad to hold and manipulate the visual mental image. Describing that face requires translating the visual features into words, a process that engages the phonological loop for assembling and preparing the verbal output. The interaction between these two 'slave systems' is essential for this task.
- After years of practice, a concert pianist can play a complex sonata flawlessly without looking at the sheet music. However, if asked to verbally describe the sequence of musical notes in a specific measure from the middle of the piece, she finds it very difficult. This discrepancy suggests a highly developed procedural memory coexisting with a less accessible:
Answer: declarative memory for the same musical information.
The ability to play the sonata is a highly ingrained motor skill, a form of procedural memory (which is non-declarative). The difficulty in explicitly stating the notes is a limitation in her declarative memory (either semantic or episodic) for that specific factual information. This illustrates the common dissociation between 'knowing how' (procedural) and 'knowing that' (declarative).
- Participants in an experiment are briefly shown the word 'CHAIR' on a screen. Later, they are faster at identifying 'TABLE' as a real word compared to participants who were initially shown an unrelated word like 'CLOUD'. This facilitation effect, which can occur even without conscious recollection of seeing 'CHAIR', is an example of priming, a phenomenon associated with:
Answer: implicit long-term memory.
Priming is a form of implicit memory where exposure to one stimulus influences the response to a subsequent stimulus without conscious guidance or intention. Because the effect is non-conscious and long-lasting, it is attributed to the implicit (or non-declarative) long-term memory system, not to conscious episodic memory or the temporary buffers of working or sensory memory.
- A patient with severe anterograde amnesia following a brain injury shows marked improvement over several days on a mirror-drawing task. However, each day the patient claims to have never seen the task before and expresses surprise at their own ability to perform it. This specific pattern of spared and impaired abilities most clearly demonstrates a dissociation between which two memory systems?
Answer: Procedural memory and episodic memory
The patient's ability to learn and retain the motor skill of mirror-drawing, without conscious awareness of having learned it, indicates that their procedural memory (a type of implicit, non-declarative memory for skills) is intact. Their inability to recall the previous learning sessions (the 'episodes' of practicing) indicates a profound impairment in their episodic memory (a type of explicit, declarative memory for personal events).
- A loud noise interrupts a man's silent rehearsal of a phone number, and the number is lost. This shows working memory's:
Answer: Active maintenance requirement
Working memory holds information only while you actively keep it in mind, and silent rehearsal is exactly that maintenance. The loud noise interrupts the rehearsal, so the number is lost. The tempting wrong answer is dependence on sensory cues, but those matter for perception and retrieval, not for the continuous upkeep that was disrupted here.
- An architect is designing a house. She mentally visualizes the 3D layout of the rooms, retrieves the client's verbal request for 'an open-concept kitchen,' and integrates this with her factual knowledge of building codes from long-term memory to form a coherent, multi-modal representation of the plan. In Baddeley's model, the component responsible for binding these different types of information into a unified whole is the:
Answer: episodic buffer.
The episodic buffer was added to Baddeley's model to account for the integration of information from the other components (phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad) and long-term memory into a single, cohesive, multi-modal episode. While the central executive directs this process, the episodic buffer is the actual 'workspace' where this binding occurs.
- An air traffic controller must simultaneously track the altitude and trajectory of several airplanes on a radar screen, process verbal communications from pilots, and make rapid decisions based on flight rules stored in their long-term memory. According to Baddeley and Hitch's model of working memory, which component is primarily responsible for coordinating these disparate tasks and allocating attentional resources?
Answer: The central executive
The central executive is the attentional control system in Baddeley's model. Its primary job is to manage and coordinate the activities of the other components (the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad), shift attention between tasks, and retrieve information from long-term memory. The scenario describes a high-demand task requiring exactly this type of coordination and attentional management.
- Two friends are discussing their knowledge of the American Civil War. Alex can list the major battles, dates, and key generals. Chris, however, can vividly recall a specific visit to the Gettysburg battlefield, remembering the emotional impact of the tour and the weather on that day. Which statement best distinguishes the primary type of long-term memory each friend is using?
Answer: Alex is using semantic memory, while Chris is using both semantic and episodic memory.
Alex's knowledge consists of general facts about the world (history), which is the definition of semantic memory. Chris also knows these facts (semantic memory), but their recall of a personal experience—the visit to the battlefield—is a classic example of episodic memory, which involves 'mental time travel' to a specific personal event. Therefore, Chris is drawing on both systems.
- Which of the following functions is most characteristic of the central executive component of working memory, distinguishing it from the other slave systems?
Answer: Inhibiting the automatic impulse to read a word while naming its color (Stroop task).
The central executive is responsible for higher-level control processes. Inhibiting a prepotent or automatic response, as required in the Stroop task, is a key executive function. Choice A describes the phonological loop, B describes the visuospatial sketchpad, and D describes the episodic buffer. Only C captures the unique attentional control and inhibitory function of the central executive.
- A person is asked to mentally count the number of windows in their childhood home. This task requires retrieving a spatial layout from long-term memory and then systematically scanning it. According to Baddeley's model, this process primarily relies on the visuospatial sketchpad for the mental imagery and which other component for keeping a running tally of the counted windows?
Answer: The phonological loop, to maintain the verbal count.
The task involves two main working memory processes. The visuospatial sketchpad is used to create and navigate the mental image of the house. The phonological loop, through subvocal rehearsal ('one, two, three...'), is used to keep track of the count. While the central executive oversees the process, the phonological loop is the component that actively maintains the verbal tally.
- In a classic memory experiment, participants are presented with a list of words and then asked for recall. If a 30-second distractor task (like counting backwards) is introduced between the end of the list and the recall period, the recency effect disappears. This finding suggests that the distractor task interferes with information held in which memory system?
Answer: Working memory
The recency effect (better recall for items at the end of a list) is attributed to the fact that these items are still active in working memory at the time of recall. A distractor task prevents rehearsal and displaces this information from working memory's limited capacity buffer, thus eliminating the effect. It does not primarily affect long-term memory consolidation or the very brief sensory trace.
- A key distinction between the concepts of 'working memory' and the older concept of 'short-term memory' (STM) is that working memory emphasizes:
Answer: the active processing and manipulation of information.
The primary theoretical shift from 'short-term memory' to 'working memory' was the inclusion of active processing components. While STM was often viewed as a passive, temporary storage bin, working memory is conceptualized as a dynamic system that not only stores but also manipulates, integrates, and processes information for ongoing cognitive tasks.
- Free recall: last words best if immediate; first words best if delayed. This pattern is best explained by:
Answer: Primacy in LTM; recency in WM
At immediate recall, the last words are still active in working memory, producing recency. After a delay, working memory fades, so the first words are recalled best because extra rehearsal transferred them into long-term memory, producing primacy. The tempting error is reversing these effects, treating recency as an LTM effect and primacy as a WM effect.
