AP Psychology: Storing Memories — Drill 10

About This Drill

AP Psychology: Storing Memories — Drill 10 is a Multiple Choice practice drill covering Unit 2: Cognition. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

AP Psychology practice questions on storing memories, covering sensory memory, short-term and working memory, long-term memory systems, encoding processes, and the biological basis of memory storage. Ideal for AP exam prep on memory models.

Questions in This Drill

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?
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?
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?
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?
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?