Study Guide II (Fall 2006)

The study questions below constitute a subset of the information which is required for the second exam.  Three of these questions will appear as "short answer" questions on the exam (you can use up to one full page for each answer).  Many of the questions have multiple parts -- make sure you read and answer all parts of each question.   Be advised that advanced preparation will facilitate your performance on the exam.  Feel free to work with others on your answers (including the class message board).
  1. Briefly discuss Sternberg's memory search paradigm. What are the predictions for a serial, exhaustive search? What are the predictions for a serial, self-terminating search? What results did Sternberg obtain?

  2. Describe the procedure Brown and Peterson used to study forgetting in short term memory. What were their conclusions about the loss of information from short term memory? Waugh and Norman challenged the conclusions drawn from the Brown-Peterson paradigm. Describe Waugh and Norman procedure and discuss what their results implied about forgetting in short term memory.

  3. What are serial position effects? How are they obtained and what do they look like? Provide a description of how have researchers interpreted the primacy and recency effects and the experimental evidence used to support this interpretation.

  4. Briefly describe the model of episodic memory developed by Tulving. Use this framework to describe why state dependent learning occurs. Also, use this framework to account for Loftus's research on eye witness testimony.

  5. Briefly describe Collins and Quillian's model of semantic memory. What are the five basic assumptions of the model? Provide evidence supporting the model. Why do typicality effects provide problems for the model and how have researchers modified the original ideas to accommodate typicality effects?

  6. Describe how lexical decision tasks have been used to study semantic memory. What basic mechanism is thought to underlie semantic priming effects? Describe how Neely's research provides support for the roles of automatic spreading activation and limited capacity attention in semantic retrieval.

  7. What are the 7 sins of memory? Provide a real-world example of each. What do they tell us about how memory works?