Week 7 — Quiz (auto-graded) · Memory

Course: Introduction to Psychology (PSYC 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Bennett
Objective tested: Objective 5 — the major models of memory and applying them to everyday behavior (the memory half).
Points: 10 (1 each) · Assignment group: Quizzes (15% of grade) · Due: end of Module 7.

This is the human-readable quiz with its vetted answer key and feedback. The import-ready Classic QTI is in F-quiz-week-07-qti.xml; the reusable item-bank entries and the Canvas placement block are at the bottom of this file.

Blueprint

No trick questions; distractors target the Week 7 misconceptions named in the lecture outline.

Questions, key, and feedback

Q1 (MC). According to the Atkinson-Shiffrin three-stage model, information flows through the memory stores in which order?
- A. Short-term memory → sensory memory → long-term memory
- B. Sensory memory → short-term memory → long-term memory ✅
- C. Long-term memory → short-term memory → sensory memory
- D. Sensory memory → long-term memory → short-term memory
Feedback: Information enters as a split-second sensory trace; if you attend to it, it moves into short-term memory; with rehearsal (especially elaborative), it transfers to long-term memory. In → hold → keep.

Q2 (MC). About how many separate items can short-term memory typically hold at one time — the capacity George Miller called the "magic number"?
- A. About 2 items
- B. About 7 (give or take 2) items ✅
- C. About 25 items
- D. An unlimited number of items
Feedback: Miller's 7±2 is the classic figure, and short-term memory holds it only ~20–30 seconds without rehearsal. (Long-term memory is the store with effectively unlimited capacity.)

Q3 (Multiple answer — select all that apply). Which of the following genuinely improve the chance that information is encoded into long-term memory?
- A. Deep, semantic processing (thinking about meaning) ✅
- B. Elaborative rehearsal (connecting new material to what you already know) ✅
- C. Chunking information into meaningful groups ✅
- D. Reading a term once, shallowly, without thinking about it
- E. Cramming all of your studying into the night before
Feedback: Deep/semantic processing, elaborative rehearsal, and chunking all build durable memories. Shallow one-time reading is weak encoding, and cramming loses to spacing — distributing study over days beats one massed block. (Great to remember the week before a midterm.)

Q4 (MC). Two students study the same word list. One focuses on what each word means and links it to personal examples; the other just notes whether each word is printed in capital letters. Who is more likely to remember the words later, and why?
- A. The meaning-focused student, because deep (semantic) processing aids recall ✅
- B. The capital-letters student, because shallow processing aids recall
- C. Neither — the kind of processing has no effect on memory
- D. The capital-letters student, because visual features are always remembered best
Feedback: Processing for meaning (deep/semantic) produces far better recall than surface features like how a word looks. Same exposure, very different memory — because the kind of processing differed.

Q5 (MC). Knowing how to ride a bicycle — a skill you can perform smoothly but cannot fully put into words — is an example of which kind of memory?
- A. Procedural (implicit/nondeclarative) memory ✅
- B. Episodic (explicit/declarative) memory
- C. Semantic (explicit/declarative) memory
- D. Sensory memory
Feedback: A learned skill you perform automatically is procedural memory — implicit ("knowing how"). Episodic and semantic are explicit ("knowing that"): personal events and general facts.

Q6 (Matching). Match each type of memory to the best example.
| Type of memory | Correct example |
|---|---|
| Episodic memory | Remembering your own first day on campus (a personal event) |
| Semantic memory | Knowing that a triangle has three sides (a general fact) |
| Procedural memory | Touch-typing without looking at the keys (a skill) |
| Working memory | Mentally adding a tip to a bill right now (actively juggling information) |
Feedback: Episodic = personally lived events; semantic = general facts; procedural = skills (implicit); working memory = actively manipulating information in the moment, not just holding it. Watch the classic mix-up: episodic (your diary) vs. semantic (an encyclopedia).

Q7 (MC). A fill-in-the-blank question makes you produce an answer from memory, while a multiple-choice question lets you identify the answer among options. The fill-in-the-blank task is testing , and the multiple-choice task is testing .
- A. recall; recognition ✅
- B. recognition; recall
- C. encoding; storage
- D. priming; chunking
Feedback: Recall = producing information with few cues (fill-in-the-blank); recognition = identifying it among options (multiple choice). Recognition is easier because the cues are supplied — which is why a multiple-choice item often feels easier than writing the answer cold.

Q8 (True / False). "Memory works like a video recording that plays back exactly what happened."
- True
- False ✅
Feedback: False. Memory is reconstructive — rebuilt each time from fragments, not replayed like a recording — so suggestions and assumptions can get woven in (the misinformation effect). A vivid, confident memory can still be wrong.

Q9 (MC). After learning this semester's new locker combination, Maria finds she can no longer recall last semester's combination — the new learning has disrupted the old. This is an example of —
- A. Retroactive interference ✅
- B. Proactive interference
- C. Encoding failure
- D. The spacing effect
Feedback: Retroactive interference = recent/new learning disrupts old memories (retro = backward). Its mirror image is proactive interference (old/prior learning disrupts new — like an old password intruding on a new one). Memory hook: PRoactive = PRior blocks new; Retroactive = Recent blocks old.

Q10 (MC). In Loftus and Palmer's classic study, witnesses who were asked how fast cars were going when they "smashed" (rather than "hit") each other gave higher speed estimates and were later more likely to falsely remember broken glass that was never in the film. This best illustrates that —
- A. memory is reconstructive and can be edited by suggestion (the misinformation effect) ✅
- B. eyewitness memory is essentially perfect and unchangeable
- C. short-term memory holds about 7 items
- D. procedural memories never fade
Feedback: The misinformation effect: misleading information after an event changes how we remember it. A single word reshaped the memory — even planting a detail (glass) that wasn't there — showing memory is reconstructive and eyewitness testimony can be unreliable.

Answer key (quick reference)

Quality gate (self-checked): each single-answer item has exactly one correct option; the multiple-answer item (Q3) lists all three encoding boosters (A, B, C) and excludes the two distractors (shallow one-time reading, cramming); the matching item pairs four memory types to four distinct examples; no item asserts a fact outside the Week 7 course definitions. No computation in this quiz, so no arithmetic to mis-key. Q9 deliberately tests retroactive so it is not a mirror duplicate of the proactive example drilled in practice.

Item-bank entries (for variants + the midterm/final)

All ten items are tagged course=PSYC1 · week=7 · objective=5 · topic=memory and deposited in Item Bank: Week 7 — Memory. The midterm (Week 8) and the per-term variant updates draw fresh items from this bank. (Tags: q1 three-stage-order, q2 stm-capacity, q3 encoding-boosters, q4 deep-vs-shallow, q5 procedural-implicit, q6 memory-types-match, q7 recall-vs-recognition, q8 reconstructive-not-recording, q9 interference-retroactive, q10 misinformation-effect.)

Canvas placement block

canvas_object   = Quizzes::Quiz
title           = "Week 7 Quiz — Memory"
assignment_group = "Quizzes"
points_possible = 10
grading_type    = points
due_offset_days = 6        # 6 days after module start
published       = true
shuffle_answers = true
provenance      = "~ Prof. Bennett's edition · Fall 2026 · built with thecoursemaker.com"