AP Psychology 2.4 Memory Encoding Overview
Practice AP Psychology 2.4 questions on how mnemonic devices, chunking, spacing, and serial position influence the encoding of information into memory.
- Syllabus
- Effective Fall 2025
- Course
- AP Psychology
Exam points
- Explain how mnemonic devices, chunking, categories and hierarchies improve encoding and retrieval.
- Distinguish massed from distributed practice and predict how spacing affects consolidation.
- Apply primacy and recency effects to predict memory for information in a sequence.
Covered syllabus points
2.4 Encoding Memories question 1
Dr. Jones was doing a formal research study of the effect of mental imagery on memory. She randomly
assigned students in the psychology course she was teaching into two groups and required them to complete the
task as part of their coursework. Forty students were in each group. Each group was presented the same list of
thirty word pairs (e.g., tree/book, house/street, friend/cat). Group A was told to form a mental image for each
pair. Group B was not given that instruction. Each group was given two minutes to memorize the pairs of
words. Dr. Jones then tested their recall of the list by giving each group the first word and asking them to
remember the second word. Dr. Jones recorded the number of words recalled by each group and then
debriefed the participants. The results are presented in the table below.
- Identify the independent variable presented in the study.
- Identify the control group.
- Explain why the type of research design being used is appropriate for this study.
- Explain what the different standard deviations indicate about the data from the two groups.
- Explain the ethical flaw that is explicitly presented in the scenario.
- Explain how the primacy effect could apply to this research.
Question (a)
(a)
Identify the independent variable presented in the study.
[ 1 ]
Question (b)
(b)
Explain how the primacy effect could apply to this research.
[ 1 ]
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