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

How is this quiz scored?

Every correct answer adds to your score, and there is no penalty for a wrong one. Your result is shown at the end with a full review of each question.

Do I need an account to play?

No. Every quiz is free and playable without signing in. An account is optional and only used to save your progress across devices.

Are explanations included?

Yes. Every question is followed by a short explanation of why the correct answer is right, so the quiz is useful whether you score well or not.

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

How Memory Gets Things Wrong

Q: Can I retake this quiz?

Yes. You can replay any quiz as many times as you like, and the questions and answer options are reshuffled each time.

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

Start Quiz

Questions

~7m

Duration

Medium

Difficulty

+100

Max XP

About this topic

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.

Questions & answers

How Memory Gets Things Wrong: all 10 questions and answers

Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.

Play it instead

Show all answers and explanationsHide answers

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.

Read alongside this quiz

The biases you cannot think your way out of

Knowing about a cognitive bias does not switch it off. What the research actually shows about correcting your own thinking.

6 min read

Frequently Asked Questions

How is scoring calculated for this quiz?

Each correct answer awards 10 XP. There is zero point penalty for incorrect guesses, encouraging learning through exploration.

Can I retake this quiz?

Yes! You can retake any quiz as many times as you like, or use the Practice Mistakes mode at the end to review questions you missed.

Are explanations provided for every question?

Absolutely. As soon as you select an option, QuizKite displays a detailed explanation card explaining why the answer is correct.

QuizKite Quality Guarantee

Every quiz on QuizKite is researched, written and fact-checked by hand against reliable references, with an explanation for each answer. Read our full Editorial Policy to learn more about our content standards.

Keep going