AP Psychology: Storing Memories (Drill 10)

Question 1. Priya is given a seven-digit phone number verbally over the phone and told to call the person back in ten seconds. She silently repeats the digits in her head, sounding them out word by word, until she can punch them into her phone, after which she immediately forgets them. Which component of working memory is Priya most directly relying on?

• A) procedural memory
• B) the phonological loop ✓
• C) the visuospatial sketchpad
• D) long-term potentiation

Explanation: Priya is holding verbal, sound-based information active by silently articulating it, that is the defining job of the phonological loop, the speech-based subsystem of working memory. (C) handles visual and spatial information, which is not what Priya is doing with digit names. (A) describes memory for motor skills like riding a bike, not for briefly held verbal content. (D) is the true-but-irrelevant distractor: long-term potentiation is a real and important mechanism, but it concerns how neurons strengthen synapses during durable storage, not how a person briefly juggles digits they are about to throw away. [Practice 1, Concept Application]

Question 2. Mr. Alvarez can ride a bicycle without consciously thinking about balance, pedaling, or steering, even though he has not ridden in fifteen years. His ability to perform this skill smoothly is best classified as what type of long-term memory?

• A) episodic
• B) semantic
• C) procedural ✓
• D) prospective

Explanation: Riding a bike is a motor skill performed automatically, without deliberate recollection, the defining feature of procedural memory, a subtype of implicit long-term memory. (A) refers to memory for specific personal events (like the day he learned to ride), which is a different system. (B) refers to general factual knowledge (like knowing what a bicycle is), which is also distinct from the physical skill itself. (D) concerns remembering to do things in the future and is not relevant to executing a learned motor skill. [Practice 1, Concept Application]

Question 3. A researcher wants to test whether deeper semantic processing leads to better long-term retention than shallow perceptual processing. Participants are randomly assigned to one of two groups: Group 1 judges whether each of 40 words is printed in capital letters, while Group 2 judges whether each word fits into a given sentence. Both groups then take a surprise recall test 24 hours later. In this study, what is the dependent variable?

• A) the type of judgment task participants were assigned to complete
• B) the 24-hour delay between encoding and recall
• C) the number of words correctly recalled on the surprise test ✓
• D) participants' level of attention during encoding

Explanation: The dependent variable is the outcome the researcher actually measures to see whether the manipulation had an effect, here, how many words participants remember on the delayed test. (A) is the independent variable (the manipulated type of processing), not the DV, a common student error is to label the manipulated variable as "dependent" because it depends on the researcher. (D) is a plausible-sounding trap: attention during encoding might matter theoretically, but this study never measures it; you cannot call something a dependent variable if the researcher did not record it. (B) is a controlled constant, held the same across both conditions. [Practice 2, Research Methods]

Question 4. A memory researcher presents participants with a 20-item list and records recall. The results show that participants remember the first few items and the last few items far better than items in the middle of the list. After a 30-second delay filled with a distracting counting task, participants still remember the first items well, but the boost for the final items disappears. Which conclusion is best supported by these data?

• A) Working memory capacity is approximately seven items, plus or minus two.
• B) Both the primacy and the recency effects reflect encoding into long-term memory.
• C) The distraction task interferes with memory retrieval more than with memory storage.
• D) The recency advantage depends on short-term memory, while the primacy advantage depends on long-term memory. ✓

Explanation: The two humps of better recall at the start and end of the list are together known as the serial position effect, and the data here separate its two halves cleanly: the primacy boost survives the distraction, while the recency boost is wiped out by it. The standard interpretation is that the first items had time to be rehearsed into durable long-term storage (so a brief delay does not hurt them), while the last items were still being held in short-term/working memory when recall was tested, and the counting task displaced them. (B) is contradicted by the pattern, since genuine long-term storage would not be eliminated by a 30-second delay. (A) is the true-but-irrelevant distractor: Miller's "magic number seven" is a real finding about working-memory capacity, but it describes how much you can hold, not why recency disappears after distraction. [Practice 3, Data Interpretation]

Question 5. After a motorcycle accident, a patient suffers severe damage to both hippocampi. In the months following surgery, the patient can still carry on a conversation, remembers events from childhood, and can even learn a new mirror-tracing skill with practice, yet every morning the patient fails to recognize the nurse who has cared for him for weeks. Which pattern of memory functioning is most consistent with this case?

• A) The ability to form new explicit memories is impaired, while working memory and some implicit memory remain intact. ✓
• B) Working memory is intact, but both explicit and implicit long-term memory formation are impaired.
• C) The patient has retrograde amnesia for events before the injury but unaffected new learning.
• D) The hippocampus is the site of long-term storage, so all previously stored memories should be lost.

Explanation: This is the classic anterograde amnesia profile: conversation is normal (working memory intact), childhood memories are preserved, new motor learning still happens with practice, but new conscious memories of people and events cannot be formed. The hippocampus is essential for forming new explicit/declarative memories, but is not itself the long-term storage site, which is why remote memories survive. (B) is partly true (working memory is intact) but overgeneralizes: implicit learning is clearly preserved. (D) reflects a common misconception, the hippocampus enables formation of new explicit memories, not permanent storage of all memories. (C) reverses the pattern: the patient's problem is forming new memories, not losing old ones. Several choices contain true elements, only (A) matches the full profile. [Practice 1, Concept Application]