The misinformation effect describes what?

Memory for an event being altered by information encountered afterwards

A refusal to believe an accurate account

Forgetting caused by a blow to the head

A tendency to recall the first item in a list best

Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve describes what pattern?

Rapid loss of new material at first, then a much slower decline

Loss that accelerates over weeks

Flashbulb memories are best described as what?

Vivid, confidently held memories of learning shocking news

Photographic recall of a printed page

Images that appear just before sleep

Memories recovered under hypnosis

In memory research, chunking means what?

Grouping items into larger meaningful units so more can be held at once

Repeating an item aloud until it sticks

Discarding old memories to make room

Splitting study into timed intervals

Working memory differs from a simple short-term store because it does what?

Holds information while actively manipulating it

Retrograde amnesia is the loss of which memories?

Those formed before the injury or illness

Only motor skills such as cycling

The tip-of-the-tongue state shows that people can often retrieve what?

Partial information such as the first letter or the number of syllables

The complete word after exactly ten seconds

Nothing whatever about the target word

Only words from a second language

Source monitoring means keeping track of what?

Where a remembered piece of information originally came from

How many times a fact has been repeated

Which language a memory was formed in

Why do psychologists call remembering reconstructive?

Each recall rebuilds the event from fragments and general knowledge

Because memories sit in single dedicated brain cells

Because nothing is ever truly forgotten

Because memory only works during sleep

Psychology Medium ⚡ 10 Questions ⏱️ ~7 Mins +100 XP

How Memory Gets Things Wrong

Memory feels like playback. Almost a century of laboratory work says it is closer to reconstruction, and the seams show up in predictable places.

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The everyday model of memory is a recording: something happened, it went in, and remembering plays it back with more or less fidelity. Laboratory work has been chipping away at that picture since the 1880s, when Hermann Ebbinghaus measured his own forgetting with lists of nonsense syllables, and it took another blow in the 1930s when Frederic Bartlett found that people retelling an unfamiliar story steadily reshaped it toward their own expectations. What replaced the recording model is messier and more useful. Remembering is treated as a rebuild from fragments, general knowledge and whatever has been encountered since — which explains why confident memories can be wrong in specific, repeatable ways. The questions here cover the best-established of those effects, the ones that show up across many laboratories rather than in a single striking study.

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How Memory Gets Things Wrong: all 10 questions and answers

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1The misinformation effect describes what?
- A A tendency to recall the first item in a list best
- B Memory for an event being altered by information encountered afterwards Correct
- C A refusal to believe an accurate account
- D Forgetting caused by a blow to the head
Answer: B. Memory for an event being altered by information encountered afterwards

Why: Elizabeth Loftus demonstrated it by changing a single verb in a question about a filmed collision. The finding has held up across a great many independent replications.
2Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve describes what pattern?
- A Rapid loss of new material at first, then a much slower decline Correct
- B Steady loss at a constant rate
- C No loss at all until sleep
- D Loss that accelerates over weeks
Answer: A. Rapid loss of new material at first, then a much slower decline

Why: He ran the experiments on himself using nonsense syllables so that existing meaning could not help him. The shape he found still turns up in studies of real classroom material.
3The serial position effect means people recall which parts of a list best?
- A Only the middle
- B Only the last two items
- C The longest words
- D The beginning and the end Correct
Answer: D. The beginning and the end

Why: The two halves have different causes: early items get more rehearsal, while late ones are still active when recall starts. A short delay wipes out the end-of-list advantage but leaves the start intact.
4Flashbulb memories are best described as what?
- A Images that appear just before sleep
- B Memories recovered under hypnosis
- C Vivid, confidently held memories of learning shocking news Correct
- D Photographic recall of a printed page
Answer: C. Vivid, confidently held memories of learning shocking news

Why: Researchers who collected accounts the day after an event and again years later found the details drifted like ordinary memory. What stayed unusually high was the rememberer's confidence.
5In memory research, chunking means what?
- A Splitting study into timed intervals
- B Grouping items into larger meaningful units so more can be held at once Correct
- C Repeating an item aloud until it sticks
- D Discarding old memories to make room
Answer: B. Grouping items into larger meaningful units so more can be held at once

Why: George Miller's well-known figure of seven items came out of this work. Later estimates put raw capacity closer to four chunks once rehearsal is prevented.
6Working memory differs from a simple short-term store because it does what?
- A Holds information while actively manipulating it Correct
- B Stores material permanently
- C Operates only during sleep
- D Handles nothing but words
Answer: A. Holds information while actively manipulating it

Why: Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch proposed separate subsystems for sound and for visual material. That split is why someone can rehearse a phone number and picture a route at the same time.
7Retrograde amnesia is the loss of which memories?
- A Those formed after it
- B Only motor skills such as cycling
- C Only the memory of faces
- D Those formed before the injury or illness Correct
Answer: D. Those formed before the injury or illness

Why: Anterograde amnesia is the mirror case, covering everything after the event. The two often appear together because overlapping brain structures serve different stages of memory.
8The tip-of-the-tongue state shows that people can often retrieve what?
- A Nothing whatever about the target word
- B Only words from a second language
- C Partial information such as the first letter or the number of syllables Correct
- D The complete word after exactly ten seconds
Answer: C. Partial information such as the first letter or the number of syllables

Why: It happens more with proper names than with ordinary nouns. Names carry little meaning of their own, so there are fewer routes into them.
9Source monitoring means keeping track of what?
- A Which language a memory was formed in
- B Where a remembered piece of information originally came from Correct
- C How many times a fact has been repeated
- D The exact date of every memory
Answer: B. Where a remembered piece of information originally came from

Why: Failures explain how a rumour heard in passing can later feel like something read in a newspaper. The content survives while its origin quietly detaches.
10Why do psychologists call remembering reconstructive?
- A Each recall rebuilds the event from fragments and general knowledge Correct
- B Because memories sit in single dedicated brain cells
- C Because nothing is ever truly forgotten
- D Because memory only works during sleep
Answer: A. Each recall rebuilds the event from fragments and general knowledge

Why: Frederic Bartlett showed it in the 1930s by having British students retell an unfamiliar folk tale. Each retelling shifted the story further toward their own cultural expectations.

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How Memory Gets Things Wrong has 10 questions and takes about 7 minutes to finish. It is rated Medium and sits in our Psychology category.

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Yes. All 10 questions carry a written explanation of why the correct answer is right, so the quiz works as a study sheet as well as a test.

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How Memory Gets Things Wrong

About this topic

How Memory Gets Things Wrong: all 10 questions and answers

1The misinformation effect describes what?

2Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve describes what pattern?

3The serial position effect means people recall which parts of a list best?

4Flashbulb memories are best described as what?

5In memory research, chunking means what?

6Working memory differs from a simple short-term store because it does what?

7Retrograde amnesia is the loss of which memories?

8The tip-of-the-tongue state shows that people can often retrieve what?

9Source monitoring means keeping track of what?

10Why do psychologists call remembering reconstructive?

Frequently asked questions about How Memory Gets Things Wrong

How many questions are in How Memory Gets Things Wrong?

How is How Memory Gets Things Wrong scored?

Are the answers to How Memory Gets Things Wrong explained?

Can I replay How Memory Gets Things Wrong?

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