Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 62

Test Bank for Essentials of Psychology,

5th Edition: Bernstein


Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://testbankbell.com/dow
nload/test-bank-for-essentials-of-psychology-5th-edition-bernstein/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Test Bank for Essentials of Psychology 5th Edition by


Bernstein

http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-essentials-of-
psychology-5th-edition-by-bernstein/

Test Bank for Essentials of Psychology, 7th Edition,


Douglas A. Bernstein

http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-essentials-of-
psychology-7th-edition-douglas-a-bernstein/

Test Bank for Psychology, 9th Edition : Bernstein

http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-psychology-9th-
edition-bernstein/

Test Bank for Essentials of Educational Psychology: Big


Ideas To Guide Effective Teaching (Subscription), 5th
Edition

http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-essentials-of-
educational-psychology-big-ideas-to-guide-effective-teaching-
subscription-5th-edition/
Test Bank for Essentials of Psychology, 4th Edition:
Franzoi

http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-essentials-of-
psychology-4th-edition-franzoi/

Essentials of Abnormal Psychology 8th Edition Durand


Test Bank

http://testbankbell.com/product/essentials-of-abnormal-
psychology-8th-edition-durand-test-bank/

Test Bank for Essentials of Abnormal Psychology, 6th


Edition : Durand

http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-essentials-of-
abnormal-psychology-6th-edition-durand/

Solution Manual for Essentials of Educational


Psychology: Big Ideas To Guide Effective Teaching
(Subscription), 5th Edition

http://testbankbell.com/product/solution-manual-for-essentials-
of-educational-psychology-big-ideas-to-guide-effective-teaching-
subscription-5th-edition/

Test Bank for Essentials of Psychology Concepts and


Applications, 4th Edition

http://testbankbell.com/product/test-bank-for-essentials-of-
psychology-concepts-and-applications-4th-edition/
Test Bank for Essentials of Psychology, 5th Edition: Bernstein

Test Bank for Essentials of Psychology, 5th Edition:


Bernstein

To download the complete and accurate content document, go to:


https://testbankbell.com/download/test-bank-for-essentials-of-psychology-5th-edition-
bernstein/

Visit TestBankBell.com to get complete for all chapters


Chapter 6: Memory

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Define encoding, storage, and retrieval, and discuss the role of each in our ability to remem-
ber. Define and give examples of acoustic, visual, and semantic memory codes. Explain the
difference between recall and recognition.
2. Define and give examples of episodic, semantic, and procedural memories.
3. Define and give examples of explicit memory and implicit memory.
4. Describe the levels-of-processing model of memory. Define maintenance and elaborative
rehearsal and explain how these concepts relate to the levels-of-processing model.
5. Describe the transfer-appropriate processing model of memory.
6. Describe the parallel-distributed processing (PDP) model of memory.
7. Describe the information-processing model of memory. Name the three stages of processing.
8. Define sensory memory and sensory registers. Discuss the capacity and duration of sensory
memory. Explain how sensory memory, including iconic memory, helps to perceive the con-
stant flow of information. Discuss the relationship between selective attention and memory.
9. Define short-term memory (STM). Discuss the relationship between short-term memory and
working memory. Describe the various ways in which information is encoded in short-term
memory.
10. Discuss the storage capacity of short-term memory. Define immediate memory span and
chunks.
11. Discuss the duration of short-term memory. Define and describe the Brown-Peterson dis-
tractor technique. Describe the importance of rehearsal in maintaining information in short-
term memory.
12. Define long-term memory (LTM). Describe the ways in which information is encoded in
long-term memory. Describe the storage capacity of long-term memory. Discuss the studies
illustrating the distortion of long-term memories.
13. Describe primacy and recency effects, and explain how these effects support a distinction
between short-term memory and long-term memory.
14. Define retrieval cues and explain why their use can increase memory efficiency. Define the
encoding specificity principle.
15. Define context-specific memory and state-dependent memory and give examples of each.
Explain the mood congruency effect.
16. Describe the semantic network theory of memory and explain the principle of spreading acti-
vation.
17. Describe incomplete knowledge and the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon and explain how it
relates to the semantic network theory of memory.
18. Discuss the research examining constructive memories.

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
170 CHAPTER 6

19. Describe how PDP memory models explain the formation of constructive memories. Ex-
plain how PDP networks can produce spontaneous generalizations, and how they explain the
operation of schemas.
20. Discuss the problems associated with eyewitness testimony in the courtroom.
21. Define and describe Ebbinghaus’s relearning method. Explain his discoveries and indicate
why they are important to memory research.
22. Explain how decay theory and interference account for the forgetting of information in short-
term and long-term memory. Define retroactive inhibition and proactive inhibition and give
an example of each.
23. Discuss the controversy surrounding repressed memory. Describe the research on motivated
forgetting, false memories, and flashbulb memories.
24. Describe the synaptic activity associated with the formation and storage of new memories.
Describe the role of the hippocampus in memory formation. Discuss the location of stored
memories within the brain, and the brain activity associated with the retrieval of memories.
25. Define and give examples of anterograde and retrograde amnesia.
26. Define mnemonic strategies and explain why they improve memory. Give an example of the
method of loci.
27. Explain why distributed practice is more effective than massed practice for learning and
retaining information. Describe the PQ4R method of reading textbooks. Describe the best
method of taking notes in a lecture.

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. The process of putting incoming information into a form with which the memory system can work
is called
a. storage. c. encoding.
b. retrieval. d. processing.
ANS: C REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .52 A. 3% B. 0% C. 82% D. 15%

2. A catchy song on the radio is most likely to become “stuck in your head” if you encode the tune
a. visually. c. procedurally.
b. acoustically. d. semantically.
ANS: B REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: C/A MSC: New

3. During a trip to an art museum, you visit the exhibit of Impressionist paintings. You are most
likely using __________ codes as you study the paintings in detail.
a. acoustic c. episodic
b. semantic d. visual
ANS: D REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: C/A

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 171

4. Laverne and Shirley are about to take a test. Their instructor warns them, “You are not allowed to
use any notes, and looking at another person's exam is prohibited.” When Laverne asks Shirley
what the instructor said, Shirley replies, “I don't remember his exact words, but he basically told us
not to cheat on the exam.” Shirley appears to have encoded the instructor's warning
a. acoustically. c. semantically.
b. procedurally. d. visually.
ANS: C REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: C/A

5. Jill is studying for her psychology midterm. The most effective way for Jill to encode the course
material would be
a. acoustically. c. semantically.
b. visually. d. episodically.
ANS: C REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .23 A. 12% B. 15% C. 63% D. 11%

6. In the process of learning the techniques of his job, Arlen will need to keep this new information
in his memory for a long time. This part of the memory process is known as
a. retrieval. c. encoding.
b. recall. d. storage.
ANS: D REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: C/A

7. The three basic processes of memory are


a. recognition, storage, and retrieval. c. encoding, storage, and retrieval.
b. encoding, storage, and forgetting. d. encoding, storage, and maintenance.
ANS: C REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .22 A. 4% B. 1% C. 91% D. 3%

8. When Alyssa is asked a trivia question, she replies, “I think I know the answer to that one, but I'm
having trouble recalling it from memory.” In other words, Alyssa is having difficulty with the
memory process known as
a. encoding. c. storage.
b. retrieval. d. rehearsal.
ANS: B REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: C/A

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
172 CHAPTER 6

9. When you ask her, Kyung cannot remember the names of all fifty U.S. state capitals. However,
when you then show her a list of U.S. city names, she can correctly point out all fifty capitals.
Kyung originally had trouble remembering the state capitals because of poor
a. recall. c. elaborative rehearsal.
b. recognition. d. maintenance rehearsal.
ANS: A REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .27 A. 83% B. 6% C. 7% D. 4%

10. When an eyewitness to a robbery tries to identify the criminal from a lineup of suspects, he or she
is engaging in which memory retrieval process?
a. Recall c. Recognition
b. Rehearsal d. Relearning
ANS: C REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .21 A. 36% B. 1% C. 63% D. 0%

11. When you attempt to identify the correct answer to this question from the following alternatives,
you are performing a(n) __________ task.
a. recall c. implicit
b. chunking d. recognition
ANS: D REF: 211 OBJ: 1 KEY: C/A

12. Caden can remember quite vividly the first time his dad took him out to learn how to ride a bike
because he didn't use training wheels and took a nasty spill, scraping his knee badly. This would
best be described as a(n) __________ memory.
a. semantic c. implicit
b. procedural d. episodic
ANS: D REF: 212 OBJ: 2 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .20 A. 1% B. 1% C. 2% D. 97%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 173

13. A person conveying an episodic memory is most likely to say which of the following?
a. “I know that . . .” c. “I know how to . . .”
b. “I understand why . . .” d. “I remember when . . .”
ANS: D REF: 212 OBJ: 2 KEY: C/A

14. Corbin memorized a list of state capitals for his geography exam. Once he had done so, they
became __________ memories.
a. implicit c. semantic
b. episodic d. procedural
ANS: C REF: 212 OBJ: 2 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .33 A. 13% B. 4% C. 70% D. 13%

15. Remembering what the word summer means requires __________ memory, whereas remembering
what you did on July 4, 2003, requires __________ memory.
a. episodic; semantic c. procedural; episodic
b. episodic; procedural d. semantic; episodic
ANS: D REF: 212 OBJ: 2 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .30 A. 2% B. 1% C. 4% D. 93%

16. Seven-year-old Ben is riding his bike to the park to meet some friends. He stops at a stop sign and
signals his intention to turn left into the park. Ben's memory of the laws of the road is an example
of __________ memory, whereas his ability to ride the bike shows __________ memory.
a. episodic; semantic c. episodic; procedural
b. semantic; episodic d. semantic; procedural
ANS: D REF: 212 OBJ: 2 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .40 A. 4% B. 3% C. 12% D. 82%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
174 CHAPTER 6

17. Jennifer is teaching Scott how to play the guitar. Jennifer instructs Scott to sit across from her and
watch her finger movements as she plays a song. She has found this method more effective than
attempting to verbally explain the complicated series of finger movements. Jennifer's teaching
strategy indicates that her memory of how to play the guitar is stored as a(n) __________ memory.
a. episodic c. procedural
b. semantic d. sensory
ANS: C REF: 212 OBJ: 2 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .34 A. 12% B. 9% C. 69% D. 9%

18. Kelly is an expert typist, but she cannot remember the locations of the keys unless she moves her
fingers as if she is typing. Kelly's memory of the keys is stored as a(n) __________ memory.
a. episodic c. semantic
b. procedural d. constructive
ANS: B REF: 212 OBJ: 2 KEY: C/A

19. During a game of Trivial Pursuit, Robyn is asked for the capital of Australia. After thinking for a
few moments she says, correctly, “Canberra.” This is an example of a(n) __________ memory.
a. implicit c. explicit
b. episodic d. procedural
ANS: C REF: 212 OBJ: 3 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .60 A. 34% B. 11% C. 47% D. 8%

20. Amanda asks Becky, “How was your spring break?” As Becky describes her vacation, she begins
to feel guilty because she subconsciously recalls how her parents criticized her for taking a trip
instead of concentrating on her studies. Becky's recollection of her vacation is an example of a(n)
__________ memory, and her feeling of guilt is an example of a(n) __________ memory.
a. implicit; explicit c. episodic; semantic
b. semantic; episodic d. explicit; implicit
ANS: D REF: 212 OBJ: 3 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .40 A. 7% B. 3% C. 31% D. 59%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 175

21. Felicia, a juror, subconsciously notices several similarities between the defendant in the case and a
man she disliked in college. Her decision in the trial is influenced by these memories. Felicia's
memories of the college man are
a. semantic. c. implicit.
b. sensory. d. explicit.
ANS: C REF: 212 OBJ: 3 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .41 A. 10% B. 2% C. 83% D. 5%

22. Julie has just met Justin. Although there is nothing overtly annoying about Justin, Julie feels a
certain inexplicable dislike for him. Although she is unaware of it, Julie was treated badly by
someone who looked like Justin when she was younger. Julie is apparently being influenced by
a(n) __________ memory.
a. episodic c. explicit
b. implicit d. procedural
ANS: B REF: 212 OBJ: 3 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .33 A. 6% B. 90% C. 4% D. 0%

23. Farah is studying for her linguistics exam. She thinks that if she can process the terminology and
theories more deeply, she will probably retain the information better. Farah’s thinking is similar to
what model of memory?
a. Levels of processing c. Parallel distributed processing
b. Transfer-appropriate processing d. Information processing
ANS: A REF: 213 OBJ: 4 KEY: C/A MSC: New

24. Richie is going to the store to buy the following items: eggs, milk, bread, apples, and flour. He
tries to remember the shopping list by repeating it over and over. Richie is using __________
rehearsal.
a. episodic c. semantic
b. elaborative d. maintenance
ANS: D REF: 213 OBJ: 4 KEY: C/A
Responses

rpb = .42 A. 2% B. 4% C. 8% D. 86%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
176 CHAPTER 6

25. As you are taking notes in class, you repeat to yourself what your instructor just said so that you
can write it down word for word. This is an example of
a. maintenance rehearsal. c. mental imagery.
b. elaborative rehearsal. d. using mnemonics.
ANS: A REF: 213 OBJ: 4 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .33 A. 83% B. 6% C. 6% D. 6%

26. The best way to keep information active in short-term memory is through __________ rehearsal,
whereas __________ rehearsal is more effective for encoding information into long-term memory.
a. maintenance; elaborative c. elaborative; maintenance
b. semantic; visual d. visual; semantic
ANS: A REF: 213 OBJ: 4 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .39 A. 87% B. 2% C. 2% D. 7%

27. Marc wants to remember where Sherry lives, so he tells himself that Sherry lives three blocks
north of his Aunt Helen, who likes to drink sherry. Marc is using
a. maintenance rehearsal. c. iconic encoding.
b. elaborative rehearsal. d. implicit encoding.
ANS: B REF: 213 OBJ: 4 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .37 A. 2% B. 79% C. 10% D. 0%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 177

28. If you need to remember a person's name for several days or weeks, the strategy of relating the
name to a characteristic of that person will be more effective than simply repeating the person's
name several times when you first learn it. This indicates that
a. elaborative rehearsal works better than maintenance rehearsal.
b. maintenance rehearsal works better than elaborative rehearsal.
c. maintenance rehearsal involves deeper processing.
d. elaborative rehearsal works best only for short-term recall.
ANS: A REF: 213 OBJ: 4 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .38 A. 84% B. 5% C. 7% D. 5%

29. Hermann is preparing for his psychology test by matching concepts with characteristics of his
many friends. For instance, he associates observational learning with his friend Faust, who tries to
imitate him all the time. What phenomenon is illustrated by Hermann's strategy?
a. Maintenance rehearsal c. Semantic encoding
b. Elaborative rehearsal d. Acoustic encoding
ANS: B REF: 213 OBJ: 4 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .44 A. 5% B. 72% C. 21% D. 2%

30. Which model of memory emphasizes the importance of retrieving information in a manner that is
similar to how it was encoded?
a. Levels of processing c. Parallel distributed processing
b. Transfer-appropriate processing d. Information processing
ANS: B REF: 213 OBJ: 5 KEY: F

31. Before studying for the midterm exam, Class A was told to expect a multiple-choice test, and Class
B was told to expect an essay test. Both classes actually got a multiple-choice test, and Class A
performed better on the test. This result is most consistent with the __________ view of memory.
a. levels-of-processing c. parallel distributed processing
b. information-processing d. transfer-appropriate processing
ANS: D REF: 213 OBJ: 5 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .35 A. 11% B. 16% C. 9% D. 65%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
178 CHAPTER 6

32. According to the transfer-appropriate processing view of memory, what would be the best retrieval
cue for remembering the sentence “The man ate the strawberry”?
a. “Something tasty.” c. “Something heavy.”
b. “Something red.” d. “Something small.”
ANS: A REF: 213 OBJ: 5 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .31 A. 54% B. 44% C. 0% D. 1%

33. Last semester Raul studied abroad in Spain. When his history teacher began lecturing on Spain,
many of Raul's memories were simultaneously activated: bullfights, tasty sangria, and flamenco
dancers. This example best illustrates the __________ model of memory.
a. maintenance rehearsal c. parallel distributed processing
b. encoding specificity d. transfer-appropriate processing
ANS: C REF: 213 OBJ: 6 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .27 A. 1% B. 10% C. 69% D. 19%

34. When Harold sees a box of Junior Mints, he immediately recalls where they are sold, when he had
them last, what they taste like, and which of his friends like them. Such a network of associations
is suggestive of the __________ model of memory.
a. levels of processing c. transfer-appropriate processing
b. information processing d. parallel distributed processing
ANS: D REF: 213 OBJ: 6 KEY: C/A

35. Bart tells Lisa about his new cat, Scratchy. Even though Bart does not mention that Scratchy has
fur, Lisa knows this because she makes this generalization from the facts she knows about cats.
Lisa's generalization about Scratchy best demonstrates
a. the method of savings.
b. a false memory.
c. the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.
d. a parallel distributed processing model of memory.
ANS: D REF: 213 OBJ: 6 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .25 A. 7% B. 1% C. 6% D. 86%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 179

36. According to the information processing model, information must pass through __________ in
order to be firmly implanted in memory.
a. implicit and then explicit memory
b. acoustic, visual, and then semantic coding
c. sensory, short-term, and then long-term memory
d. maintenance and then elaborative rehearsal
ANS: C REF: 214 OBJ: 7 KEY: F

37. As you read this sentence, which of the following memory processes does not occur?
a. Your sensory register holds a representation of the visual information for about a second.
b. Your working memory helps to encode the information at a deeper level.
c. Your short-term memory holds the first few words of the sentence in memory as you read
the rest of it.
d. Your long-term memory helps you recognize and understand the words.
ANS: B REF: 214 OBJ: 7 KEY: C/A MSC: New

38. Holding incoming information long enough for it to be processed is a function of


a. short-term memory. c. immediate memory.
b. long-term memory. d. the sensory registers.
ANS: D REF: 214 OBJ: 8 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .35 A. 33% B. 13% C. 8% D. 46%

39. You turn the radio on just in time to hear the weather report.. Before you process the information,
your roommate bursts in and exclaims, “Look at this—it's the new G & R album!” “Cool!” you
reply. Then you become frustrated because you realize that you don’t know what the weatherman
said. This is most likely due to the process of
a. decay. c. selective attention.
b. proactive inhibition. d. displacement.
ANS: C REF: 216 OBJ: 8 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .37 A. 10% B. 38% C. 24% D. 28%

40. Your psychology instructor is lecturing about sensory memory. She explains that if sensory
memory was like a sound clip of your favorite song, you would only hear __________ second(s)
of the song.
a. about sixty c. about twenty
b. less than one d. about forty-five
ANS: B REF: 216 OBJ: 8 KEY: C/A MSC: New

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
180 CHAPTER 6

41. Tami lights a sparkler and hands it to her young son, Jacob. She tells Jacob to write his name in the
air with the sparkler. They can see this “writing” because the light from the sparkler is briefly held
in their __________ memories.
a. sensory c. short-term
b. working d. long-term
ANS: A REF: 216 OBJ: 8 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .34 A. 71% B. 6% C. 23% D. 0%

42. Bill suffers from a brain condition that causes him to see the world as a series of still images
instead of the normal continuous flow the rest of us experience. One explanation for this condition
is that he has a problem with his __________ memory.
a. iconic c. explicit
b. short-term d. procedural
ANS: A REF: 216 OBJ: 8 KEY: C/A MSC: New

43. Which process largely determines whether information is moved from the sensory registers to
short-term memory?
a. Selective attention c. Chunking
b. Rehearsal d. Serial search
ANS: A REF: 216 OBJ: 8 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .29 A. 59% B. 27% C. 10% D. 4%

44. Fred is introduced to Lana by a friend. Fred initially remembers Lana's name, but he has forgotten
it when their conversation ends a few minutes later. Fred probably had Lana's name stored in
__________ memory.
a. long-term c. short-term
b. procedural d. sensory
ANS: C REF: 216 OBJ: 9 KEY: C/A

45. Jamie is working in a group to develop creative solutions to a social problem. As Jamie is
considering new ideas, she is able to manipulate the information held in her short-term memory
primarily because of the operations of her __________ memory.
a. state-dependent c. working
b. semantic d. procedural
ANS: C REF: 216 OBJ: 9 KEY: C/A

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 181

46. Which of the following statements about short-term (a.k.a. working) memory is false?
a. The capacity limit appears to be the “magic number” of seven plus or minus two chunks of
information.
b. The duration of information is about eighteen seconds.
c. Short-term memory takes information from sensory memory and allows a more thorough
representation and analysis of this information, if needed.
d. Semantic encoding seems to dominate in short-term memory.
ANS: D REF: 216 OBJ: 9 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .43 A. 9% B. 8% C. 26% D. 57%

47. Conrad (1964) presented participants with strings of letters and asked them to repeat the letters
immediately. He found that
a. visual encoding dominated when the letters were presented visually.
b. mistakes tended to be based on proximity of letters in the alphabet.
c. participants could not recall any of the letters presented.
d. participants tended to make acoustically related mistakes.
ANS: D REF: 217 OBJ: 9 KEY: F

48. Damon has an average memory, and he is trying to keep a seven-digit phone number in his short-
term memory. This number is likely to be
a. too long for him to keep in short-term memory.
b. forgotten after one second if it is unrehearsed.
c. encoded acoustically rather than semantically.
d. remembered if Damon's levels of acetylcholine are low.
ANS: C REF: 217 OBJ: 9 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .24 A. 5% B. 27% C. 67% D. 2%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
182 CHAPTER 6

49. Stuart is trying to remember a word list that includes the word mat. If Stuart makes a mistake in
recalling the word mat within 15 seconds of hearing it, he will be most likely to recall the word
__________ instead.
a. floor c. bat
b. nail d. carpet
ANS: C REF: 217 OBJ: 9 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .32 A. 2% B. 0% C. 79% D. 19%

50. Becci calls her husband, Ted, at his office to ask him to pick up a few things at the store on his
way home. She then rattles off a list of twenty-five items. Only after they say good-bye and hang
up does Ted write down the list. Ted should be able to remember __________ items without
chunking.
a. 3–5 c. 12–16
b. 5–9 d. 20–25
ANS: B REF: 217 OBJ: 10 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .29 A. 7% B. 82% C. 7% D. 4%

51. The capacity of short-term memory is, on the average, __________ chunks for numbers,
__________ chunks for letters, and __________ chunks for words.
a. five; six; seven c. seven; seven; seven
b. six; seven; eight d. seven; eight; nine
ANS: C REF: 217-218 OBJ: 10 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .35 A. 9% B. 6% C. 78% D. 6%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 183

52. If the letters OBACKFIBHJCA are rearranged into HBO-JFK-CIA-ABC, they become much
easier to store in short-term memory. This phenomenon illustrates the usefulness of __________ in
short-term memory.
a. rehearsal c. peg-word systems
b. chunking d. the method of loci
ANS: B REF: 217 OBJ: 10 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .33 A. 0% B. 86% C. 7% D. 7%

53. Jolene often deals with students asking for information regarding the status of their student loans.
Now that she is experienced, she is able to hold a student's social security number in her memory
for the 10 to 20 minutes she is serving each one. She does so by associating small groups of the
numbers with a special date or fact. This is called
a. the method of loci.
b. chunking.
c. the Brown-Peterson distractor technique.
d. sensory memory.
ANS: B REF: 217-218 OBJ: 10 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .22 A. 9% B. 75% C. 15% D. 1%

54. Short-term memory can store __________ item(s), and the duration of storage is __________.
a. only one; approximately 1 hour c. approximately seven; over 60 seconds
b. approximately seven; about 20 seconds d. unlimited; unlimited
ANS: B
Responses:

rpb = .43 REF: 218 OBJ: 11 KEY: F


A. 2% B. 89% C. 4% D. 4%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
184 CHAPTER 6

55. After looking up a friend's new number in the phone book, Fred discovers that the pay phone is
being monopolized by someone. Assuming that Fred is not rehearsing the number, what is the
longest period of time that he can wait without forgetting the number entirely?
a. 1 second c. 20 seconds
b. 10 seconds d. 2 minutes
ANS: C REF: 218 OBJ: 11 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .33 A. 9% B. 9% C. 81% D. 1%

56. In the Brown-Peterson distractor technique, participants are presented with a random group of
three letters and then asked to count backward by 3s from some number until they are told to stop.
This procedure is designed to find the __________ of __________ memory.
a. duration; short-term c. duration; sensory
b. capacity; short-term d. capacity; sensory
ANS: A REF: 218 OBJ: 11 KEY: F

57. Polina participated in a short-term memory experiment. The experimenter read aloud a list of
twenty objects, and Polina had to mentally rate how effective each object would be if she were
stranded on a deserted island. The experimenter then asked her to count backward by 3s from 100.
This task, known as __________, ensured that Polina did not rehearse the information to keep it in
her short-term memory.
a. motivated forgetting c. the Brown-Peterson distractor technique
b. chunking d. the method of savings
ANS: C REF: 218 OBJ: 11 KEY: C/A

58. Mistakes in recall from what memory system tend to involve substitutions based on meaning?
a. Sensory c. Long-term
b. Short-term d. Working
ANS: C REF: 219 OBJ: 12 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .39 A. 6% B. 24% C. 60% D. 11%

59. A person who is trying to retrieve a particular word from long-term memory is most likely to make
the mistake of retrieving
a. words that have been more thoroughly rehearsed.
b. similar sounding words.
c. words with similar meanings.
d. words that look the same.
ANS: C REF: 219 OBJ: 12 KEY: C/A

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 185

60. In a memory experiment, participants heard the sentence “They turned in their papers late, so they
didn't get full credit.” Two minutes later, the participants were asked whether they heard the
preceding sentence or “Their papers were turned in late, so they didn't get full credit.” Many
participants incorrectly reported that they heard the second version. The reason is that __________
memory primarily uses __________ coding.
a. short-term; semantic c. long-term; semantic
b. short-term; acoustic d. long-term; acoustic
ANS: C REF: 218 OBJ: 12 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .36 A. 24% B. 51% C. 23% D. 3%

61. Long-term memory is normally capable of retaining how many pieces of information?
a. Seven pieces of information c. An unlimited amount
b. Five to nine chunks of information d. About one million pieces of information
ANS: C REF: 219 OBJ: 12 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .25 A. 1% B. 3% C. 94% D. 1%

62. Which of the following memory systems has the greatest storage capacity?
a. Sensory c. Long-term
b. Short-term d. Episodic
ANS: C REF: 219 OBJ: 12 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .28 A. 3% B. 1% C. 92% D. 4%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
186 CHAPTER 6

63. The primacy effect suggests that the question from this exam that you will be most likely to
remember later is the question that you
a. spent the most time on. c. read first.
b. found easiest to answer. d. read last.
ANS: C REF: 221 OBJ: 13 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .50 A. 11% B. 5% C. 79% D. 5%

64. Greg calls his wife, Sheryl, at work and asks her to stop on her way home and pick up bread,
butter, bananas, light bulbs, laundry detergent, pencils, sugar, salt, flour, cinnamon, and bonbons.
Sheryl remembers the bread, butter, and bananas but forgets the rest. This is an example of
a. the recency effect. c. state dependence.
b. encoding specificity. d. the primacy effect.
ANS: D REF: 221 OBJ: 13 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .58 A. 8% B. 14% C. 3% D. 75%

65. You are ordering dinner with a group of five friends at a restaurant. You notice that the waiter has
neither pad nor pencil but relies on memory to get the orders correct. Assume that the waiter will
report the orders to the kitchen right away (he won't do any intervening mental tasks). To give
yourself the best chance of getting what you ordered, you should attempt to give your order to the
waiter
a. first, second, or third. c. fourth, fifth, or sixth.
b. third or fourth. d. first, second, fifth, or sixth.
ANS: D REF: 221 OBJ: 13 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .30 A. 8% B. 1% C. 12% D. 78%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 187

66. Your friend is ordering pizza and wants to know what toppings you want. You say “pepperoni,
sausage, green peppers, olives, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, and pineapple.” Your friend doesn't
write this down—he just dials the pizza place and places the order. Which of the following
toppings is your friend most likely to forget?
a. Pepperoni c. Sausage
b. Pineapple d. Mushrooms
ANS: D REF: 221 OBJ: 13 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .30 A. 6% B. 12% C. 1% D. 81%

67. Researchers believe that the primacy effect reflects the transference of early words to __________
memory, whereas the recency effect reflects the workings of __________ memory.
a. short-term; long-term c. sensory; short-term
b. long-term; short-term d. short-term; sensory
ANS: B REF: 221 OBJ: 13 KEY: F

68. Rachael asks Steve, “Do you remember my name?” When Steve says that he does not remember,
Rachael says, “I'll give you a hint—it starts with an 'R'.” Rachael is providing Steve with a
__________ to help him remember.
a. mnemonic c. chunk
b. schema d. retrieval cue
ANS: D REF: 221 OBJ: 14 KEY: C/A

69. According to the encoding specificity principle, which of the following would be the best retrieval
cue for the sentence, “The dog ate the bone”?
a. Hungry animal c. Contains five words
b. Two girls jumped rope. d. It's a sentence.
ANS: A REF: 221 OBJ: 14 KEY: C/A

70. The effectiveness of retrieval cues depends on the extent to which they
a. encourage the transfer of information from short-term to long-term memory.
b. relate to information that was encoded at the time of original learning.
c. invoke visual images.
d. are context-specific.
ANS: B REF: 221 OBJ: 14 KEY: F

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
188 CHAPTER 6

71. Greg tries to convince his instructor to give the midterm exam in the same room in which the class
is held because he read that it would improve his chances of getting a higher score. Greg must
know about
a. state-dependent memory. c. metamemory.
b. context-specific memory. d. the method of loci.
ANS: B REF: 222 OBJ: 15 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .43 A. 18% B. 78% C. 2% D. 2%

72. Jill has trouble remembering her classmates' names outside of the classroom. This effect is
probably due to
a. context-specific memory. c. state-dependent memory.
b. interference. d. decay.
ANS: A REF: 222 OBJ: 15 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .24 A. 84% B. 3% C. 13% D. 0%

73. Sharmin is trying to remember the hilarious conversation she had with her friends last night. If
Sharmin wanted to utilize context-specific memory to help remember the conversation topics, she
should
a. recreate the mood she was in when the conversation took place.
b. concentrate on the last topic they discussed.
c. cluster the topics into meaningful groups of information.
d. return to the restaurant in which they had the conversation.
ANS: D REF: 222 OBJ: 15 KEY: C/A MSC: New

74. Suppose you overheard a spicy rumor one night when you were drunk at a bar but could not recall
it the next day when you were sober. This example illustrates
a. dissociation. c. state-dependent learning.
b. context-specific learning. d. anterograde amnesia.
ANS: C REF: 222 OBJ: 15 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .27 A. 9% B. 5% C. 76% D. 10%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 189

75. While studying diligently for his midterm, Raoul consumes massive quantities of sugar by
drinking Rush cola and eating Grandma's cookies. The day of the midterm examination, Raoul is
careful to eat nutritious, low-sugar foods and drink lots of milk and water. During the exam, Raoul
has trouble recalling what he had studied. This can best be explained by
a. context-specific memory. c. state-dependent memory.
b. retroactive inhibition. d. proactive inhibition.
ANS: C REF: 222 OBJ: 15 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .25 A. 14% B. 5% C. 80% D. 1%

76. Whenever Felix and Oscar argue, they bring up past issues. When they are getting along well, they
have a hard time remembering what they argued about. What might produce this difference in the
retrieval of memories?
a. Flashbulb memory effect c. General knowledge effect
b. Primacy of memories effect d. Mood congruency effect
ANS: D REF: 222 OBJ: 15 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .31 A. 10% B. 7% C. 1% D. 81%

77. Belinda suffers from bipolar disorder: sometimes she can be very happy and almost deliriously
excited, whereas at other times she becomes extremely depressed. When she is in her excited state,
she is introduced to several people whom she has never met before. She doesn't encounter them
again for a few weeks, but when she does she is feeling depressed. Which of the following is true?
a. She is more likely to remember their names than if she were excited.
b. She is less likely to remember their names than if she were excited.
c. She is about equally likely to remember their names regardless of what state she is in.
d. She definitely will not remember their names in her depressed state but might remember
their faces.
ANS: B REF: 222 OBJ: 15 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .27 A. 20% B. 65% C. 6% D. 8%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
190 CHAPTER 6

78. The semantic memory network theory says that


a. concepts are represented by many interconnected associations within the brain.
b. information is stored in memory by a process called spreading activation.
c. semantic memories must be processed by sensory and short-term memory before entering
long-term memory.
d. information is more likely to be remembered if it is processed deeply.
ANS: A REF: 223 OBJ: 16 KEY: F

79. Which of the following is the best example of spreading activation at work?
a. You start thinking about cars, and that leads you to think about trucks and sport-utility
vehicles.
b. Your sensory registers allow you to perceive smooth motion when you move your head.
c. You find it difficult to remember happy things when you are in a bad mood.
d. You find it easy to relearn vocabulary words that you had once learned but forgot.
ANS: A REF: 223 OBJ: 16 KEY: C/A

80. Semantic network models predict that people will respond more quickly to the question “Can a bat
fly?” than they will to “Is a bat a mammal?” because
a. of the primacy effect.
b. the first question requires a deeper level of processing.
c. they probably have a stronger association between “bat” and “wings” than “bat” and
“mammal.”
d. the first question can be answered using short-term memory, but the second question
cannot.
ANS: C REF: 223 OBJ: 16 KEY: C/A

81. Blair is asked a question during a game of Trivial Pursuit. The answer is on the tip of his tongue,
but he can't come up with it. Which of the following memory processes failed him?
a. Encoding c. Retrieval
b. Storage d. Rehearsal
ANS: C REF: 224 OBJ: 17 KEY: C/A

82. Al is on the witness stand. He is asked whether he can remember the name of the person who told
him to place the bet. Al replies that he thinks the last name of the person starts with “C.” Al's
response is an example of
a. penultimate response. c. spontaneous generalization.
b. feeling-of-knowing experience. d. tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.
ANS: D REF: 224 OBJ: 17 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .28 A. 11% B. 20% C. 12% D. 58%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 191

83. Doumitra is telling Carrie about a movie she saw last month. She knows that Jake and Maggie
Gyllenhaal both star in the movie and that it involves a scary bunny rabbit, but she cannot come up
with the title of the movie. According to the textbook, such difficulty in retrieving information is
known as
a. incomplete knowledge. c. proactive inhibition.
b. spreading activation. d. retrograde amnesia.
ANS: A REF: 224 OBJ: 17 KEY: C/A MSC: New

84. When asked to describe an examination room at his doctor's office, John seemed to do an accurate
job. However, his description included a framed medical degree on the wall that in fact was not
there. This is an illustration of
a. context-specificity. c. constructive memory.
b. elaborative rehearsal. d. a retrieval cue.
ANS: C REF: 224 OBJ: 18 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .30 A. 15% B. 8% C. 69% D. 8%

85. Elijah takes his friend George to his favorite restaurant, which George has never been to. Later
that evening, Elijah asks George to recall everything that was in the restaurant. George mistakenly
“remembers” seeing things such as salt and pepper shakers on the tables and a cash register in the
lobby. George's answer can best be explained by
a. the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon. c. constructive memory.
b. the feeling-of-knowing experience. d. encoding specificity.
ANS: C REF: 224 OBJ: 18 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .31 A. 1% B. 15% C. 77% D. 8%

86. Your friend tells you that she just bought a cat. You naturally assume that your friend means that
she bought a housecat rather than a lion or a tiger. This is an illustration of a(n)
a. constructive memory. c. implicit memory.
b. spontaneous generalization. d. relearning method.
ANS: B REF: 226 OBJ: 19 KEY: C/A

87. When you hear the phrase “birthday party,” you might start thinking of a cake, candles, presents,
and balloons. These form part of your __________ for birthday parties.
a. schema c. flashbulb memory
b. sensory register d. immediate memory span
ANS: A REF: 227 OBJ: 19 KEY: C/A

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
192 CHAPTER 6

88. Roxanne's friend Darcy recently had her purse stolen while walking on the quad. Although Darcy
never specified the gender of her attacker, Roxanne later remembered the purse snatcher as being
male. Roxanne's potentially erroneous assumption that the attacker was male is an example of a(n)
__________, which is best explained by the __________ model of memory.
a. feeling-of-knowing experience; levels-of-processing
b. spontaneous generalization; information-processing
c. spontaneous generalization; parallel distributed processing
d. incomplete knowledge; parallel distributed processing
ANS: C REF: 226 OBJ: 19 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .17 A. 5% B. 22% C. 65% D. 9%

89. Curly and Moe were questioned by the police about a car accident they had witnessed just a couple
of hours ago. Curly was asked how fast the Ford was going when it smashed into the stop sign.
Moe was asked how fast the Ford was going when it hit the stop sign. All else being equal, Moe
will most likely remember that the Ford was going
a. the same speed that Curly remembered.
b. slower than the speed that Curly remembered.
c. faster than the speed that Curly remembered.
d. over the speed limit.
ANS: B REF: 228 OBJ: 20 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .25 A. 2% B. 91% C. 5% D. 2%

90. Shania is in court being cross-examined about a car accident that she witnessed. If the defense
attorney wants to manipulate Shania's recall of the accident in favor of her client, which of the
following questions would she be most likely to ask?
a. “How fast was my client going when he hit the truck?”
b. “How fast was my client going when he made contact with the truck?”
c. “How fast was the defendant going when he slammed into the truck?”
d. “Although my client was issued a speeding ticket, do you think he was driving fast enough
to do all that damage?”
ANS: B REF: 228 OBJ: 20 KEY: C/A

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 193

91. When a witness reports many details about the scene of a crime, she is
a. not necessarily trustworthy because she might have missed important details about the
criminal.
b. obviously someone with a superior memory who should be trusted..
c. likely to have paid close attention to everything and her testimony can be assumed to be
accurate.
d. probably a motivated liar because crimes happen too quickly for people to process details.
ANS: A REF: 228 OBJ: 20 KEY: C/A

92. Many death row inmates were convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony; which of the
following best represents what is known about that kind of testimony?
a. Eyewitness testimony is highly reliable.
b. Good and bad eyewitness testimony is evaluated accurately by juries.
c. Eyewitness testimony can be biased by the types of questions that are asked.
d. Eyewitness testimony is never reliable.
ANS: C REF: 229 OBJ: 20 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .17 A. 5% B. 2% C. 91% D. 2%

93. Felicia is studying for her Psychology 100 midterm. Because she studied so hard for the quizzes
earlier in the semester, she finds it is taking her less time to relearn many of the concepts and
terms. The difference between the amount of time it took Felicia to initially learn the material for
the quizzes and the amount of time it is taking her to relearn the material for the midterm is known
as
a. primacy. c. recency.
b. mnemonics. d. savings.
ANS: D REF: 230 OBJ: 21 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .47 A. 7% B. 3% C. 11% D. 80%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
194 CHAPTER 6

94. When Kevin took piano lessons as a child, it took him three weeks to learn to play the “Moonlight
Sonata.” As an adult, when he decided to relearn the song in order to accompany his daughter's
performance at a dance recital, it took him only one week. The difference in Kevin's learning time
is called
a. secondary gain. c. savings.
b. latent learning. d. practice.
ANS: C REF: 230 OBJ: 21 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .52 A. 14% B. 18% C. 67% D. 0%

95. According to Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve, most forgetting occurs within the first __________
after learning.
a. week c. twenty-four hours
b. three days d. nine hours
ANS: D REF: 230 OBJ: 21 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .24 A. 2% B. 6% C. 35% D. 57%

96. Jim took introductory psychology when he was a junior in high school. Now, as a college
freshman, Jim finds that he doesn't have to study as hard to understand the psychological concepts.
To measure the savings from high school to college psychology, Jim might apply the
a. Brown-Peterson distractor technique. c. relearning method.
b. PQ4R system. d. encoding specificity principle.
ANS: C REF: 230 OBJ: 21 KEY: C/A

97. You are driving down the street when you see a billboard displaying a phone number for a service
you need. You keep repeating the number over and over so you won't forget it until you can write
it down at home. You do this to prevent the process of __________ from causing you to forget the
number.
a. decay c. deductive interference
b. construction d. proactive inhibition
ANS: A REF: 231 OBJ: 22 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .25 A. 58% B. 1% C. 13% D. 27%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 195

98. In one study, students studied nonsense syllables. Then some of these students carried on with
normal waking activities, and others took naps. Those who took naps recalled more syllables, thus
illustrating the effect __________ has on learning.
a. decay c. interference
b. conservation d. state-dependent learning
ANS: C REF: 231 OBJ: 22 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .35 A. 2% B. 33% C. 55% D. 10%

99. You see a phone number on television for a product you want to buy, but you can't find a pencil to
write it down. As you are trying to memorize the number, you see another number appear in the
next commercial for a second product you want to buy. Suddenly you realize that you have
forgotten the first number! This outcome is due to
a. decay. c. interference.
b. proactive inhibition. d. repression.
ANS: C REF: 231 OBJ: 22 KEY: C/A

100. After watching this year's Super Bowl, Tara finds it difficult to recall the events of last year's
Super Bowl. Tara is experiencing
a. decay. c. proactive inhibition.
b. the relearning method. d. retroactive inhibition.
ANS: D REF: 231 OBJ: 22 KEY: C/A

101. Suppose you take a French class in the fall and then take Spanish in the spring. If you have more
difficulty remembering aspects of French after you've started learning Spanish, it may be due to
the phenomenon known as
a. retroactive inhibition. c. deductive interference.
b. proactive inhibition. d. anterograde amnesia.
ANS: A REF: 231 OBJ: 22 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .25 A. 55% B. 36% C. 6% D. 2%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
196 CHAPTER 6

102. Neil knows how to play field hockey and now wants to learn to play ice hockey. If his prior
knowledge of field hockey interferes with his learning to play ice hockey, this is an example of
a. amnesia. c. retroactive inhibition.
b. proactive inhibition. d. decay.
ANS: B REF: 231 OBJ: 22 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .34 A. 0% B. 45% C. 53% D. 1%

103. Last week, Darrel memorized a poem. Now his roommate tells him that he has memorized one
word incorrectly. Unfortunately, Darrel has memorized the incorrect version so well that he has
difficulty learning and remembering the correct word. This example best illustrates
a. reinforcement. c. proactive inhibition.
b. decay. d. retroactive inhibition.
ANS: C REF: 231 OBJ: 22 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .37 A. 2% B. 0% C. 65% D. 33%

104. Which of the following pieces of evidence best supports the idea that people may repress
memories?
a. People generally do not remember anything about the first year or two of their lives.
b. People can be induced to create false memories that they truly believe.
c. People tend to remember pleasant memories more easily than unpleasant ones.
d. People who have intense emotional experiences tend to remember them in a detailed
manner.
ANS: C REF: 232 OBJ: 23 KEY: C/A

105. James does not like his roommate's girlfriend, and he keeps forgetting to tell his roommate when
she calls. What best explains his actions?
a. Interference c. Motivated forgetting
b. Decay d. Disuse
ANS: C REF: 232 OBJ: 23 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .47 A. 21% B. 2% C. 77% D. 0%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 197

106. Most older adults can remember exactly when and where they heard of President Kennedy's
assassination. Such so-called __________ memories are usually very detailed and vivid.
a. latent c. state-dependent
b. context-dependent d. flashbulb
ANS: D REF: 234 OBJ: 23 KEY: C/A

107. Keri is forty years old and has had many experiences throughout her life. Which of the following
would she be likely to remember most clearly?
a. Being a student in third grade
b. Participating in a psychology experiment
c. Her favorite dress in high school
d. The accidental death of her best friend when she was seven
ANS: D REF: 234 OBJ: 23 KEY: C/A

108. Xandra is learning rapidly and storing new memories all the time. In order for her brain to store
these memories, her neurons will have to
a. become myelinated.
b. form new synapses and change the function of existing synapses.
c. send stronger signals to the amygdala and hypothalamus.
d. increase the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine.
ANS: B REF: 235-236 OBJ: 24 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .27 A. 6% B. 72% C. 14% D. 8%

109. As Ron ages, his ability to remember things is declining. His doctor believes that there is a
biological reason for this deterioration and prescribes a drug to improve Ron's memory. The doctor
most likely prescribed a drug that would __________ the amount of __________ activity in the
brain.
a. increase; dopamine c. increase; acetylcholine
b. decrease; glutamate d. decrease; serotonin
ANS: C REF: 236 OBJ: 24 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .22 A. 24% B. 2% C. 69% D. 5%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
198 CHAPTER 6

110. After being hit on the head, Jean-Luc has a memory problem. He cannot learn the names of new
people that he meets. Fortunately, he can still remember details of his life prior to the head injury.
Jean-Luc is most likely demonstrating
a. proactive inhibition. c. retrograde amnesia.
b. anterograde amnesia. d. the recency effect.
ANS: B REF: 237 OBJ: 25 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .30 A. 3% B. 79% C. 18% D. 0%

111. Aliens abducted Wally and destroyed his capacity to form any new episodic memories. In other
words, they damaged Wally's __________, causing __________ amnesia.
a. hippocampus; anterograde c. hypothalamus; retrograde
b. hippocampus; retrograde d. hypothalamus; anterograde
ANS: A REF: 237 OBJ: 25 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .37 A. 78% B. 13% C. 4% D. 6%

112. Jamie has had her hippocampus removed and cannot form new memories. Since the surgery, she
spends time taking tennis lessons, although she can never remember the lessons after she has them.
After a month of lessons, her tennis ability will likely
a. remain the same. c. show improvement.
b. show a marked decline. d. show a slight decline.
ANS: C REF: 237 OBJ: 25 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .34 A. 62% B. 1% C. 37% D. 0%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 199

113. Thor won a gold medal in the hammer throw at the 1996 Olympics and then married his
sweetheart, Elke. Shortly afterward, however, Thor was in an accident and suffered damage to his
hippocampus. Now Thor cannot
a. recognize Elke's face.
b. remember the muscle sequencing necessary to throw the hammer.
c. remember that he won the Olympics in 1996.
d. remember who won the hammer throw in the 2000 Olympics.
ANS: D REF: 237 OBJ: 25 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .54 A. 21% B. 19% C. 12% D. 49%

114. Crystal was involved in a serious snowmobile accident. Immediately after the accident she could
not remember the four days prior to the injury. As she recovered, she eventually remembered
everything except the actual snowmobile ride that resulted in the injury. What did she suffer from?
a. Anterograde amnesia c. Retrograde amnesia
b. Infantile amnesia d. Age amnesia
ANS: C REF: 237 OBJ: 25 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .25 A. 23% B. 1% C. 76% D. 0%

115. Beatrice is hit on the head rather hard and suffers a concussion and retrograde amnesia. Which of
the following statements is false?
a. Beatrice will have temporary loss of memory from before the head trauma.
b. Beatrice will have permanent loss of memory immediately prior to the head trauma.
c. Beatrice will experience slow recovery of lost memories.
d. Beatrice will have trouble forming new episodic memories.
ANS: D REF: 237-238 OBJ: 25 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .35 A. 17% B. 15% C. 3% D. 64%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
200 CHAPTER 6

116. Brian is trying to remember the colors of the visible spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
indigo, and violet. Brian decides to use the acronym “Roy G. Biv,” which contains the first letter
of each of the colors' names. Brian is using __________ to remember the colors.
a. the method of loci c. a mnemonic
b. semantic coding d. decomposition
ANS: C REF: 239 OBJ: 26 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .30 A. 3% B. 8% C. 87% D. 1%

117. After moving to a new city, you go to the bank to open an account. When the new-accounts
representative asks you to select a personal identification number (PIN) for your ATM card, you
choose 0422 because your birthday is on April 22nd. This memory strategy is called
a. the peg-word system. c. savings.
b. network association. d. mnemonics.
ANS: D REF: 239 OBJ: 26 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .26 A. 4% B. 28% C. 1% D. 67%

118. In order to remember famous psychologists, Jeff thinks of his apartment with Sigmund Freud
lounging on his couch, B. F. Skinner eating pigeons in his kitchen, and Wilhelm Wundt
“experiencing” the cold on his balcony. Jeff's visualization strategy is known as
a. maintenance rehearsal. c. the relearning method.
b. chunking. d. the method of loci.
ANS: D REF: 239 OBJ: 26 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .42 A. 15% B. 17% C. 7% D. 61%

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 201

119. Cicero, an imperial Roman orator, endorsed a mnemonic strategy called the method of loci more
than 2,000 years ago; the technique is still one of the most powerful known today. Method of loci
involves
a. creating visual images that associate list items with specific locations in a well-known
place.
b. using rhyming word-number lists as a base and associating list items with those.
c. telling a story using all the items on the to-be-remembered list.
d. repeating a list to yourself over and over until you remember it perfectly.
ANS: A REF: 239 OBJ: 26 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .34 A. 74% B. 11% C. 14% D. 2%

120. Jerry and Tommy each studied for exactly ten hours to get ready for the psychology midterm
exam. Jerry studied during the ten hours immediately preceding the exam. Tommy studied for one
hour per day on each of the ten days immediately preceding the exam. Assuming all else is equal
between Jerry and Tommy, how well are they likely to do on the exam?
a. Jerry should do better than Tommy.
b. Tommy should do better than Jerry.
c. Jerry and Tommy should do about equally well.
d. There is no way to predict how they will do based on the information given.
ANS: B REF: 239 OBJ: 27 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .23 A. 0% B. 81% C. 0% D. 19%

121. Your friend Benjamin tells you that he’s going to study for his upcoming exam by setting aside 6
hours one day to devote solely to the material. Having learned much from your psychology class,
you explain to Benjamin that it’s much more effective for him to utilize __________ to study
because it will help him to spread out the material and learn it more deeply.
a. massed practice c. the recency effect
b. distributed practice d. maintenance rehearsal
ANS: B REF: 239 OBJ: 27 KEY: C/A MSC: New

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
202 CHAPTER 6

122. Which of the following would be least likely to improve recall of textbook information?
a. Reading the material a second time
b. Mentally organizing the material
c. Asking questions about the material
d. Relating the material to already-known information
ANS: A REF: 240 OBJ: 27 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .40 A. 65% B. 0% C. 23% D. 12%

123. Tanya and Brad are roommates studying for a psychology midterm. Tanya is careful to read her
textbook at an even pace, but Brad keeps stopping and rereading when there is something he
doesn't quite grasp. Which of the following is true?
a. Tanya will remember more of the text because she was not constantly interrupting the
flow of learning.
b. Brad will remember more because he adapted his speed to the complexity of the text.
c. Tanya will remember more because she used distributed practice.
d. Brad will remember more because he used massed practice.
ANS: B REF: 239-240 OBJ: 27 KEY: C/A
Responses:

rpb = .27 A. 4% B. 85% C. 5% D. 7%

124. Which of the following is not one of the PQ4R suggestions about how to read a textbook?
a. Preview each chapter before reading it.
b. Reflect on what you are reading, thinking of your own examples of concepts.
c. Recite major points in your own words when you finish a section.
d. Reread the chapter, underlining or highlighting key passages.
ANS: D REF: 240 OBJ: 27 KEY: F

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
MEMORY 203

125. The most effective way to take lecture notes is to


a. write down as much detail as possible.
b. think about what is said and write down the main points.
c. highlight your textbook in class as the main points are covered.
d. skip taking notes and just listen.
ANS: B REF: 240 OBJ: 27 KEY: F
Responses:

rpb = .20 A. 4% B. 95% C. 1% D. 0%

ESSAY

1. Give an example of each of the three basic types of memory: episodic, semantic, and procedural.
ANS: Episodic memory involves a memory of a specific event that happened while a person was
present. It involves remembering an incident, such as your last birthday, the restaurant where you
ate dinner last night, and so on.
Semantic memory contains generalized knowledge of the world that does not involve memory of a
specific event or episode. It involves remembering that the capital of South Carolina is Columbia,
that ovens are for baking things, and so on.
Procedural memory involves a skill memory or a memory of how to do things. This involves
remembering how to ride a bike, read a map, use a dictionary, tie your shoelaces, and so on.

2. Rose needs to remember how to get to a new friend's house. If she does not remember how to get
there, what could have gone wrong with her memory system? Answer the question by describing
the three basic memory processes.
ANS: Remembering how to get to a new friend's house involves putting information into memory
in a form that the memory system can accept and use. Encoding can be visual, acoustic, or
semantic. Rose may not have encoded the information about where her new friend lives. Storage
means maintaining the information in the system over time. Procedural, semantic, and episodic
memories can be stored for a long time. Given that the physical structures involved in memory are
normal and the information has been encoded properly, failure to remember should not be due to a
storage problem. Retrieval involves recalling information stored in memory and bringing it into
consciousness. People often search memories looking for information. Rose may be unable to
retrieve the information about where her friend lives because she did not make meaningful
associations when she learned the information; the cues she needs may be missing; or she may be
experiencing problems with decay or interference.

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
204 CHAPTER 6

3. Describe the information-processing model of memory. Be sure to discuss the storage capacity and
duration of each stage of mental processing and the type(s) of encoding associated with each stage.
ANS: According to the information-processing model of memory, information must pass through
three stages of mental processing in order to be retained over time. Information first enters sensory
memory, where sensory registers can maintain an almost complete representation of a sensory
stimulus for about a second or so. If the information in sensory memory is attended to, then it
moves to short-term memory, which has a capacity of about 5-9 meaningful chunks of
information. Information in short-term memory will disappear in less than 20 seconds unless it is
maintained through the use of elaborative rehearsal. Acoustic coding tends to dominate short-term
memory, although visual, semantic, or kinesthetic coding is also possible. If the information in
short-term memory is processed further, it may enter long-term memory. The capacity of long-
term memory is thought to be unlimited, and the duration is possibly unlimited as well.
Information in long-term memory tends to be encoded semantically (by its general meaning).

4. Discuss two kinds of brain damage, anterograde and retrograde amnesia. Explain the causes and
nature of both types of amnesia.
ANS: Anterograde amnesia involves the loss of memory for events that occur after an injury is
sustained. In other words, the individual cannot form new episodic memories, though it is possible
for individuals to form new implicit memories. This kind of amnesia may occur when there is
damage to the hippocampus, neighboring parts of the cerebral cortex, and the thalamus.
Retrograde amnesia involves the loss of memories for events formed prior to the injury. In other
words, a person with this type of amnesia can’t remember anything that took place in the months
or years before the injury. Most people who have retrograde amnesia usually regain their lost
memories. The most distant events are recalled first; then the person gradually regains memory for
events leading up to the injury.
MSC: New

5. Discuss how decay theory, interference, proactive inhibition, and retroactive inhibition help to
explain why we forget information we have learned. Provide an example of each.
ANS: The decay theory suggests that information gradually disappears from memory, especially
if information is not rehearsed or thought about for a period of time. For example, after a person
does not use algebra for a long period of time, the information gradually disappears. Interference
suggests that the storage or the retrieval of information is impaired by the presence of other
information. In other words, as new information is learned, older information may be displaced or
pushed out of memory. For example, if you create a new log-in password, it may affect your
ability to recall previously created passwords. Two types of interference are proactive inhibition
and retroactive inhibition. Proactive inhibition occurs when old information interferes with
learning or remembering new information. For instance, if you have learned Italian as a second
language, and later attempt to learn Spanish, you may have difficulty learning the new rules of
Spanish because the Italian rules are interfering. Retroactive inhibition occurs when the learning of
new information interferes with our recall of older information. For example, if you study for a
Chemistry exam, and later that day, study for an Anatomy exam, the new Anatomy terminology
becomes fresh in mind, but at the cost of disrupting what Chemistry you had studied earlier.
MSC: New

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part
Test Bank for Essentials of Psychology, 5th Edition: Bernstein

MEMORY 205

SHORT ANSWER

1. Differentiate recall and recognition as two memory retrieval processes.


ANS: Recall occurs when information is retrieved with few or no cues (as in essay exam
questions). Recognition occurs when retrieval is aided by the presence of cues (as in multiple
choice exam questions).
MSC: New

2. Explain how implicit and explicit memory work.


ANS: Implicit memory involves unintentional recollection and influence of prior experiences,
which occurs in the process of priming. Explicit memory involves deliberate or intentional
recollection, which occurs when someone is actively remembering information.
MSC: New

3. Discuss the roles of context-specific and state-dependent memories.


ANS: Context-specific memories are memories that are helped or hindered by similarities or
differences in environmental context. This explains why returning to a room can help us remember
something we forgot after leaving that room. State-dependent memories occur when we encode
information about how we were feeling during a learning experience, and this information acts as a
retrieval cue. This explains why, when a couple is having an argument, negative information is
more likely to be remembered.
MSC: New

4. Discuss how maintenance and elaborative rehearsal are helpful in the encoding of new
information.
ANS: Maintenance rehearsal involves a repetition process that is effective for temporary encoding
of information. For longer storage of information, it is recommended to utilize elaborative
rehearsal, a process in which you relate new material to information you already have stored in
memory.
MSC: New

5. Differentiate retroactive inhibition and proactive inhibition as they relate to forgetting.


ANS: Retroactive inhibition occurs when learning new information interferes with our recall of
older information. Proactive inhibition occurs when old information interferes with learning or
remembering new information.
MSC: New

© 2011 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole
or in part

Visit TestBankBell.com to get complete for all chapters


Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
1790 contains so great a portion of the Revolution, and sows the
seed of so much future division and civil war, that it seems ridiculous
to confine oneself to the description of the restricted action of one
man who had not yet even attained power. It will be necessary,
however, to make a survey of this restricted action in order that we
may comprehend the greater rôle of Danton in the two years that
follow.
Danton came, then, with Legendre and the three others into a city
Council very much opposed to him and to the district whose spirit he
had formed. He was not often heard, and there is no doubt that he
deliberately tried to purchase by silence the more just and equable
judgment of such men as he respected, but who knew him only by
unfavourable report. For the bulk of the Assembly he cannot but
have felt contempt; they had no instinct of the revolutionary tide;
even when they were attempting to check the movement that Danton
represented, they were inefficient and unworthy opponents, from
whom his eye must have wandered inwards to the great battles that
were preparing.
In the eight months during which he was a member of the
Provisional Commune, that is, from January to September 1790, his
name appears in the debates but a dozen times.[71] More than half
of these are mention of committees upon which his common-sense
and legal training were of service; in one only, that of February 4,
does he speak on a motion, and that is in support of Barré to admit
the public when the oath was taken: one other (that on the 19th of
March concerning the formation of a “grand jury”) would be
interesting were it not that the whole gist of the debate was but a
repetition of the much more significant discussion at the Cordeliers.
Finally, there is one little notice which is half-pathetic and half-
grotesque: he is one of the committee of twenty-four charged with
the duty of “presenting their humble thanks, with the mayor at their
head,” to the King for giving the municipality a marble bust of
himself. But every entry is petty and unimportant: Danton at the
Provisional Municipality of 1790 is deliberately silent—he can do
nothing.
If we turn, however, to a field in which he was more at home, we
find him during that year more than ever the leader of the Cordeliers,
which itself becomes more than ever the leader of Paris.
There are two important features in the part he plays at the
assemblies of the district during the spring and summer in which he
was a silent member of the Commune. First, the affair of his arrest;
secondly, his campaign against what may be called “the municipal
reaction.”
As to the first, it is a very minor point in the general history of the
Revolution, but it is of considerable influence upon the career of
Danton himself. When the affair of Marat was (or should have been)
forgotten, the Châtelet, with that negligence which we have seen
them display in the business of the warrant for Marat’s arrest, saw fit
to launch another warrant, this time for the arrest of Danton himself.
Once more that unpopular and moribund tribunal put itself on the
wrong side of the law, and once more it chose the most inopportune
moment for its action. It was on the 17th of March,[72] nearly two
months after the affair—two months during which Danton had been
hard at work effacing its effects upon his reputation—that the warrant
was issued, and the motive of arrest given in the parchment was of
the least justifiable kind. In the district meeting of the day, when the
police officers had been taken to the hall of the Cordeliers, and had
had the changes in the law read out to them, Danton had made use
of a violent phrase: its actual words were not known; some said that
he had threatened to “call out the Faubourg St. Antoine, and make
the jaws of the guard grow white.” Other witnesses refused to
attribute those words to him, but accused him of saying, “If every one
thought as I do, we should have twenty thousand men at our back;”
his friends admitted that some angry and injudicious speech, such as
he was often guilty of, had escaped him, but they affirmed that he
had added, “God forbid that such a thing should happen; the cause
is too good to be so jeopardised.”
Whatever he said (and probably he himself could not accurately
have remembered), the place and the time were privileged. It was a
test case, but the logic of such a privilege was evident. Here you
have deliberative assemblies to which are intrusted ultimately the
formation of a government for Paris: what is said in such a
constituent meeting, however ill-advised, must in the nature of things
be allowed to pass; if not, you limit the discussion of the primary, and
if you limit that discussion you vitiate the whole theory upon which
the new constitution was being framed. It must be carefully
remembered that we are not dealing with deliberative bodies long
established, possessed of the central power, and holding privilege by
tradition and by their importance in the State; we are dealing with the
elementary deliberative assemblies in a period which, rightly or
wrongly, was transforming the whole State upon one perfectly
definite political theory—namely, that these primary assemblies were
the only root and just source of power. When, therefore, Parisian
opinion rose violently in favour of the president of a district so
attacked, when three hundred voters out of five signed a petition in
Danton’s favour, when he was re-elected president of the district
twelve days after the issue of the warrant, it was because the whole
body of the electors felt a great and justifiable fear of what was left of
the old regime. The Châtelet had acted so, not from a careful
appreciation of public danger—to fend off which temporary powers
had been given it—but because it was blind with old age; because it
dated from a time and was composed of a set of men who hated all
deliberative assemblies, and it was justly thought that if such actions
were justified, the whole system of revolutionary Paris was in danger.
As though in proof of the false view that the Châtelet took of their
man, on the 19th of March, two days after the warrant was issued,
Danton was urging the replacement of the Châtelet by a Grand Jury;
he had an admiration and a knowledge of the old English system,
and it was against a man attempting so wise a reform that the last
relic of the old jurisprudence was making an attack.
An appeal was lodged with the National Assembly, and Anthoine
read a long report to the Assembly upon May 18. This report was
strongly in favour of Danton. It was drawn up by a special committee
—not partisan in any way—and after examining all the evidence it
came to this conclusion against the Châtelet. Nevertheless the
House, a great body of nearly a thousand men, to most of whom the
name of Danton meant only a loud Radical voice, hesitated. To adopt
the report might have irretrievably weakened the Châtelet, and the
National Assembly was extremely nervous on the subject of order in
Paris. It ended by an adjournment. The report remained in Danton’s
favour; he was not arrested, but the affair was unfortunate for him,
and threw him back later at a very important occasion, when he
might have entered into power peaceably himself and at a peaceable
time.
But while this business was drawing to its close, during the very
months of April and May which saw his partial vindication, another
and a far more momentous business was occupying the Cordeliers
—a matter in which they directed all their energy towards a legal
solution, but in which, unfortunately for the city, they failed.
Ever since the days of October—earlier if you will—there had been
arising a strong sentiment, to which I have alluded more than once,
and which, for lack of a better name, may be called the Moderate
reaction in Paris. It is difficult to characterise this complex body of
thought in one adjective, and I cannot lengthen a chapter already too
prolonged by a detailed examination of its origin and development.
Suffice it to say that from the higher bourgeoisie (generally
speaking), from those who were in theory almost Republican, but
whose lives were passed in the artificial surroundings of wealth, and
finally from the important group of the financiers, who of all men
most desired practical reform, and who of all men most hated ideals;
from these three, supported by many a small shopkeeper or
bureaucrat, came a demand, growing in vigour, for a conservative
municipal establishment—one that should be limited in its basis,
almost aristocratic in quality, and concerned very much with the
maintenance of law and order and very little with the idea of
municipal self-government.
It is a character to be noted in the French people, this timidity of
the small proprietor and his reliance upon constituted authority. It is a
matter rarely observed, and yet explaining all Parisian history, that
this sentiment does not mark off a particular body of men, but,
curiously enough, is found in the mind of nearly every Frenchman,
existing side by side with another set of feelings which, on occasion,
can make them the most arrant idealists in the world.
For the moment this intense desire for order was uppermost in the
minds of those few who were permitted to vote. In the Cordeliers it
was the other character of the Parisian that was emphasised and
developed. They were determined on democracy, like everybody
else; but, unlike the rest, they were not afraid of the dangerous road.
They were inspired and led by a man whose one great fault was a
passionate contempt of danger. On this account, though they are
taxpayers and bourgeois, lawyers, physicians, men of letters and the
like, they do all they can to prevent the new municipal system from
coming into play, but they fail.
Now, consider the Assembly. That great body was justly afraid of
Paris; indeed, the man who was head and shoulders above them all
—Mirabeau—was for leaving Paris altogether. The Assembly, again,
had the whole task of re-making France in its hands, and it could not
but will that Paris, in the midst of which it sat, should be muzzled.
Through all the debates of the Provisional Commune it could easily
be seen that Bailly and Lafayette were winning, and that the
Parliament would be even more Moderate than they. Three points
were the centres of the battle: first, the restricted suffrage which was
to be established;[73] secondly, the power which was to be exercised
over the new Commune by the authorities of the Department; thirdly,
the suppression of those sixty democratic clubs, the districts, and
their replacement by forty-eight sections, so framed as specially to
break up the ties of neighbourhood and association, which the first of
the Revolution had developed. It was aimed especially at the
Cordeliers.
Against the first point the Cordeliers had little to say. Oddly
enough, the idea of universal suffrage, which is so intimate a part of
our ideas on the Revolution, was hardly thought of in early 1790.
Against the second they debated, but did not decree; it was upon the
third that they took most vigorous action. The law which authorised
the new municipal scheme was passed on May the 27th, and, faithful
to their policy, the Cordeliers did not attempt to quarrel with the
National Assembly, but they fought bitterly against the application of
the law by Bailly and his party. The law was signed by the King on
June the 27th, and on the same day the mayor placarded the walls,
ordering an immediate installation of the new system. The 27th was
a Saturday. Within a week the new sections were to be organised,
and on the Monday, July 5, the voting was to begin. The very next
day, the 28th, the Cordeliers protested in a vigorous decree, in which
they called on the fifty-nine other districts to petition the National
Assembly to make a special exception of the town of Paris, to
consider the great federation of July 14, which should be allowed to
pass before the elections, and finally to give the city time to discuss
so important a change. All through the week, on the 1st, 2nd, and
3rd of July, they published vigorous appeals. They were partially
successful, but in their main object—the reconstruction of the
aristocratic scheme and the arousing of public spirit against it—they
entirely failed. Bailly is elected mayor on August 2 by an enormous
majority—practically 90 per cent. The old districts disappear, and,
like every other, the famous Cordeliers are merged in the larger
section of the Théâtre Français. It may not sit in permanence; it may
not (save on a special demand of fifty citizens) meet at all; it is
merely an electoral unit, and in future some 14,000 men out of a city
of nearly a million are to govern all. The local club, directing its
armed force and appealing to its fellows, is abolished. Danton then
has failed.
But, as we shall see later, the exception became the rule. No
mechanical device could check the Revolution. The demand for
permanent sections is continuous and successful. From these
divisions, intended to be mere marks upon a map, come the cannon
of the 10th of August, and it is the section of the Théâtre Français,
wherein the traditions and the very name of the Cordeliers were to
have been forgotten, that first in Europe declared and exercised the
right of the whole people to govern.
If I may repeat a common-place that I have used continually in this
book, the tide of the Revolution in Paris was dammed up with a high
barrier; its rise could not be checked, and it was certain to escape at
last with the force and destructive energy of a flood.
CHAPTER IV
THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY

I have taken as a turning-point in the career of Danton the


municipal change which marks the summer of 1790, concluding with
that event the first chapter of his political action, and making it the
beginning of a new phase. Let me explain the reasons that have led
me to make such a division at a moment that is marked by no
striking passage of arms, of policy, or of debate.
In the first place, a recital of Danton’s life must of necessity follow
the fortunes of the capital. The spirit of the people whose tribune he
was (their growing enthusiasms and later their angers)—that spirit is
the chief thing to guide us in the interpretation of his politics, but the
mechanical transformations of the city government form the
framework, as it were, upon which the stuff of Parisian feeling is
woven. The detail is dry and often neglected; the mere passing of a
particular law giving Paris a particular constitution, a system not
unexpected, and apparently well suited to the first year of the
Revolution, may seem an event of but little moment in the
development of the reform; but certain aspects of the period lend
that detail a very considerable importance. In the rapid
transformation which was remoulding French society, the law,
however new, possessed a strength which, at this hour, we can
appreciate only with difficulty. In a settled and traditional society
custom is of such overwhelming weight that a law can act only in
accordance with it; a sudden change in the machinery of government
would break down of itself—nay, in such a society laws can hardly
be passed save those that the development of tradition demands.
But in a time of revolution this postulate of social history fails. When
a whole people starts out to make fresh conditions for itself, every
decree becomes an origin; the forces that in more regular periods
mould and control legislative action are, in a time of feverish
reconstruction, increased in power and give an impetus to new
institutions; the energy of society, which in years of content and
order controls by an unseen pressure, is used in years of revolution
to launch, openly and mechanically, the fabric that a new theory has
designed. Thus you may observe how in the framing of the American
constitution every point in a particular debate became of vast
moment to the United States; thus in our time the German Empire
has found its strength in a set of arbitrary decrees, all the creation of
a decade; thus in the Middle Ages the Hildebrandine reform framed
in the life of one man institutions which are vigorous after the lapse
of eight hundred years; and thus in the French Revolution a
municipal organisation, new, theoretic, and mechanical, was strong
enough, not indeed to survive so terrible a storm, but to give to the
whole movement a permanent change of direction.
This, then, is the transitional character of the summer of 1790, as
regards the particular life of Danton and the particular city of Paris.
What the Cordeliers had fought so hard to obtain as a constitutional
reform had failed. The direct action of the districts upon the
municipality was apparently lost for ever, and the centre of the new
system was in future to be controlled in the expression of ideas and
paralysed in its action. What the Cordeliers had represented in spirit,
though they had not formulated it in decrees—government by the
whole people—was apparently equally lost. The law of December
(that which established the “active and passive citizens”) was
working for Paris as for all France; and though a suffrage which
admitted two-thirds of the male population to the polls could not be
called restrictive, yet the exception of men working for wages under
their master’s roof, the necessity of a year’s residence, and the
qualification of tax-paying did produce a very narrow oligarchy in a
town like Paris: the artisans were excluded, and thousands of those
governed fell just beyond the limits which defined the municipal
voter. Danton may receive the provincial delegates, may make his
speeches at the feast in the Bois de Boulogne; but once the organ of
government has been closed to his ideas, the road towards the
democracy lies through illegality and revolt.
Now there is another and a wider importance in this anniversary of
the fall of the Bastille. It is the point at which we can best halt and
survey the beginning of the heat which turned the Revolution from a
domestic reform of the French nation to a fire capable of changing
the nature of all our civilisation. I do not mean that you will find those
quarrels in the moment; in 1790 there is nothing of the spirit that
overturned the monarchy nor of the visions that inspired the Gironde;
you cannot even fairly say that there are general threats or
mutterings of war, although the Assembly saw fit to disclaim them: it
is a year before the fear of such dangers arises. But there is in this
summer something to be discovered, namely, an explanation of why
two periods differing so profoundly in character meet so suddenly
and with such sharp contrast at one point in the history of the
movement; it is from the summer of 1790 and onwards that the laws
are passed, the divisions initiated, which finally alienate the King,
from that lead to his treason, from that rouse Europe, and from the
consequent invasion produce the Terror, the armies, and the Empire.
The mind needs a link between two such different things as reform
and violence, and because that link is not supplied in the mere
declaration of war or in the mere flight to Varennes, men commit the
error of reading the spirit of the Republic into the days of Mirabeau,
or even of seeing temperate politics in the apostolic frenzy of ’93.
Some, more ignorant or less gifted than the general reader, explain it
by postulating in the character of the French nation quaint
aberrations which may be proper to the individual, but which never
have nor can exist in any community of human beings.
Let me recapitulate and define the problem which, as it seems to
me, can be solved by making a pivot of the anniversary of the
States-General.
There are, then, in the story of the Revolution these two phases,
so distinct that their recognition is the foundation of all just views
upon the period. In the first, the leaders of the nation are bent upon
practical reforms; the monarchy is a machine to hand for their
accomplishment; the sketch of a new France is drawn, the outlines
even begin to be filled by trained and masterly hands. Phrases will
be found abundantly in those thirty months, because phrases are the
christening of ideas, and no nation of Roman training could attempt
any work without clear definitions to guide it. But these phrases,
though often abstract in the extreme, are never violent, and the
oratory itself of the National Assembly is rarely found to pass the
limits which separate the art of persuasion from the mere practice of
defiance.
In the second phase, for which the name of the Convention often
stands, those subterranean fires which the crust of tradition and the
stratified rock of society had formerly repressed break out in
irresistible eruption. The creative work of the revolutionary idea
realises itself in a casting of molten metal rather than in a forging,
and the mould it uses is designed upon a conception of statuary
rather than of architecture. The majestic idol of the Republic, in
whose worship the nation has since discovered all its glories and all
its misfortunes, is set up by those artists of the ideal; but they forget,
or perhaps ignore, the terrible penalties that attach to superhuman
attempts, the reactions of an exclusive idealism.
What made the second out of the first? What made a France
which had discussed Sieyès listen to St. Just or even to Hébert? The
answer to this question is to be discovered in noting the fatal seeds
that were sown in this summer of 1790, and which in two years bore
the fruit of civil war and invasion.
In the first place, that summer creates, as we have seen, a
discontented Paris—a capital whose vast majority it refuses to train
in the art of self-government, and whose general voice it refuses to
hear.
In the second place, it is the moment when the discontent in the
army comes to a head. The open threat of military reaction on the
side of a number of the officers, their intense animosity against the
decrees abolishing titles, their growing disgust at the privileges
accorded to the private soldiers—all these come face to face with
non-commissioned officers and privates who are full of the new
liberties. These lower ranks contained the ambitious men whose
ability, the honest and loyal men whose earnestness, were to carry
French arms to the successes of the Revolutionary wars.
In the third place, it is the consummation of the blunder that
attempted to create an established National Church in France.
Before this last misfortune a hundred other details of these months
that were so many mothers of discord become insignificant. Civil war
first muttering in the South, counter-revolution drilling in Savoy, the
clerical petition of Nîmes, the question of the Alsatian estates, the
Parisian journals postulating extreme democracy, the Jacobins
appearing as an organised and propagandist body, the prophetic cry
of Lameth—all these things were but incidents that would have been
forgotten but for the major cause of tumult, which is to be discovered
in the civil constitution of the clergy.
Of course, the kings would have attacked, but they were divided,
and had not even a common motive. Of course, also, freedom, in
whatever form it came, would have worked in the moribund body of
Europe like a drug, and till its effect was produced would have been
thought a poison. But against the hatred of every oppressor would
have been opposed a disciplined and a united people, sober by
instinct, traditionally slow in the formation of judgments, traditionally
tenacious of an opinion when once it had been acquired. It would
have been sufficient glory for the French people to have broken the
insolence of the aggressors, to have had upon their lists the names
of Marceau and of Hoche.
But with the false step that produced civil war, that made of the
ardent and liberal West a sudden opponent, that in its final effect
raised Lyons and alienated half the southern towns, that lost Toulon,
that put the extreme of fanaticism in the wisest and most loyal minds
—such a generous and easy war was doomed, and the Revolution
was destined to a more tragic and to a nobler history. God, who
permitted this proud folly to proceed from a pedantic aristocracy,
foresaw things necessary to mankind. In the despair of the
philosophers there will arise on either side of a great battle the
enthusiasms which, from whencever they blow, are the fresh winds
of the soul. Here are coming the heroes and the epic songs for which
humanity was sick, and the scenes of one generation of men shall
give us in Europe our creeds for centuries. You shall hear the “Chant
du Départ” like a great hymn in the army of the Sambre et Meuse,
and the cheers of men going down on the Vengeur; the voice of a
young man calling the grenadiers at Lodi and Arcola; the noise of the
guard swinging up the frozen hill at Austerlitz. Already the forests
below the Pyrenees are full of the Spanish guerillas, and after how
many hundred years the love of the tribe has reappeared again
above the conventions that covered it. There are the three colours
standing against the trees in the North and the South; and the
delicate womanly face of Nelson is looking over the bulwarks of the
Victory, with the slow white clouds and the light wind of an October
day above him, and before him the enemy’s sails in the sunlight and
the black rocks of the coast.
It may be well, at the expense of some digression, to say why the
laws affecting the clergy should be treated as being of paramount
historical importance. They ruined the position of the King; they put
before a very large portion of the nation not one, but two ideals; and
what regular formation can grow round two dissimilar nuclei? Finally
—a thing that we can now see clearly, though then the wisest failed
to grasp it—they went against the grain of the nation.
It is a common accusation that the Revolution committed the
capital sin of being unhistorical. Taine’s work is a long anathema
pronounced against men who dared to deny the dogmas of evolution
before those dogmas were formulated. Such a criticism is erroneous
and vain; in the mouths of many it is hypocritical. The great bulk of
what the Revolution did was set directly with the current of time. For
example: The re-unison of Gaul had been coming of itself for a
thousand years—the Revolution achieved it; the peasant was
virtually master of his land—it made him so in law and fact; Europe
had been trained for centuries in the Roman law—it was precisely
the Roman law that triumphed in the great reform, and most of its
results, all of its phraseology, is drawn from the civil code. But in this
one feature of the constitution of the clergy it sinned against the
nature of France. Of necessity the Parliament was formed of
educated men, steeped in the philosophy of the time, and of
necessity it worked under the eyes of a great city population. In other
words, the statesmen who bungled in this matter and the artisans
who formed their immediate surroundings were drawn from the two
classes which had most suffered from the faults of the hierarchy in
France.
Mirabeau, for example, has passed his life in the rank where rich
abbés made excellent blasphemy; the artisan of Paris has passed
his life unprotected and unsolicited by the priests, whose chief duty
is the maintenance of human dignity in the poor. Add to this the
Jansenist legend of which Camus was so forcible a relic, and the
Anglo-mania which drew the best intellects into the worst
experiments, and the curious project is inevitable.
In these first essays of European democracy there was, as all the
world knows, a passion for election. In vain had Rousseau pointed
out the fundamental fallacy of representation in any scheme of self-
government. The example of America was before them; the vicious
temptation of the obvious misled them; and until the hard lessons of
the war had taught them the truth, representation for its own sake,
like a kind of game, seems to have been an obsession of the upper
class in France. They admitted it into the organisation of the Church.
Now let us look in its detail at this attempt to make of the Catholic
Church in the eighteenth century a mixture of the administration of
Constantine, of the presbyteries of first centuries, and of the “branch
of the civil service” which has suited so well a civilisation so different
from that of France.
The great feature of this reform was the attempt to subject the
whole clerical organisation to the State. I do not mean, of course, the
establishment of dogmas by civil discussion, nor the interference
with internal discipline; but the hierarchy was to be elected, from the
parish priest to the bishop; the new dioceses were to correspond to
the new Departments, and, most important of all, their confirmation
was not to be demanded from the Pope, but “letters of communion”
were to be sent to the Head of the Church, giving him notice of the
election.
This scheme passed the House on July 12, 1790, two days before
the great feast of the federation. A time whose intellect was alien to
the Church, a class whose habits were un-Catholic, had attempted a
reformation. Why was the attempt a blunder? Simply because it was
unnecessary. There were certain ideas upon which the
reconstruction of France was proceeding; they have been constantly
alluded to in this book; they are what the French call “the principles
of ’89.” Did they necessarily affect the Church? Yes; but logically
carried out they would have affected the Church in a purely negative
way. It was an obvious part of the new era to deny the imperium in
imperio. The Revolution would have stultified itself had it left
untouched the disabilities of Protestants and of Jews, had it
continued to support the internal discipline of the Church by the civil
power. It was logical when it said to the religious orders: “You are
private societies; we will not compel your members to remain,
neither will we compel them to leave their convents.” (In the decree
of February 13, 1790.) It would have been logical had it said to the
Church: “It may be that you are the life of society; it may be that your
effect is evil; we leave you free to prove your quality, for freedom of
action and competition is our cardinal principle.” But instead of
leaving the Church free they amused themselves by building up a
fantastic and mechanical structure, and then found that they were
compelling religion to enter a prison. Nothing could be conceived
more useless or more dangerous.
On the other hand, if this scheme as a whole was futile, there were
some details that were necessary results of what the clergy
themselves had done, and some which, if not strictly necessary,
have at least survived the Revolution, and are vigorous institutions
to-day. It might have been possible for Rome to seize on these as a
basis of compromise, and it is conceivable, though hardly probable,
that the final scheme might have left the Church a neutral in the
coming wars. But if the councils of the Holy See were ill-advised, the
Parliament was still less judicious; its extreme sensitiveness to
interference from abroad was coupled with the extreme pedantry of a
Lanjuinais, and the scheme in its entirety was forced upon Louis. He,
almost the only pious man in a court which had so neglected religion
as to hate the people, wrote in despair to the Pope; but before the
answer came he had signed the law, and in that moment signed the
warrant for his own death and that of thousands of other loyal and
patriotic men.
While these future divisions were preparing, during the rest of the
year 1790 Danton’s position becomes more marked. We find a little
less about him in the official records, for the simple reason that he
has ceased to be a member of an official body, or rather (since the
first Commune was not actually dissolved till September) he remains
the less noticeable from the fact that the policy which he represented
has been defeated; but his personality is making more impression
upon Paris and upon his enemies. We shall find him using for the
first time moderation, and for the first time meeting with systematic
calumny. He acquires, though he is not yet of any especial
prominence, the mark of future success, for he is beginning to be
singled out as a special object of attack; and throughout the summer
and autumn he practises more and more that habit of steering his
course which up to the day of his death so marks him from the
extremists.
The failure of his policy, the check which had been given to the
Cordeliers, and the uselessness of their protests on the 1st, 2nd, and
3rd of July, had a marked effect upon the position of Danton even in
his own district. He had been president when they were issued, and
his friend D’Eglantine had been secretary. One may say that the
policy of resistance was Danton’s, and that but for his leadership it
would have been unheard. Hence, when it has notoriously failed,
that great mass of men who (when there is no party system) follow
the event, lost their faith in him.
Bailly is not only elected by an enormous majority in all Paris[74]
on the 2nd of August, but even Danton’s own district, now become
the Section of the Théâtre Français, abandoned his policy for the
moment. In a poll of 580, 478 votes were given for Bailly.
In this moment of reverse he might with great ease have thrown
himself upon all the forces that were for the moment irregular. The
Federation of July had brought to Paris a crowd of deputies from the
Departments, and to these provincials the good-humour and the
comradeship of this Champenois had something attractive about it.
In a Paris which bewildered them they found in him something that
they could understand. In a meeting held by a section of them in the
Bois de Boulogne it is Danton who is the leading figure. When the
deputies of Marseilles ask for Chenier’s “Charles IX.,” it is Danton
who gets it played for them at the Théâtre Français in spite of the
opposition of the Court; and again it is Danton who is singled out
during an entr’acte for personal attack by the loyalists, who had
come to hiss the play.[75]
The unrepresented still followed him, and he still inspired a vague
fear in the minds of men like Lafayette. Innocent of any violence, he
stood (to those who saw him from a great distance) for insurrection.
He was remembered as the defender of Marat, and Marat in turn
annoyed him by repeated mention and praise in his ridiculous
journal. Note also that the time was one in which the two camps
were separating, though slowly, and the rôle of a demagogue would
have been as tempting to a foolish man on the Radical, as the rôle of
true knight was to so many foolish men on the Conservative side.
Each part was easy to play, and each was futile.
Danton refused such a temptation. He, almost alone at that
moment (with the exception, in a much higher sphere, of Mirabeau),
was capable of being taught by defeat. He desired a solid foundation
for action. Here were certain existing things: the club of the
Cordeliers, which had for a while failed him; the Friends of the
Constitution, which were a growing power; the limited suffrage of
Paris, which he regretted, but which was the only legal force he
could appeal to; the new municipal constitution, which he had bitterly
opposed, but which was an accomplished fact. Now it is to all these
realities that he turns his mind. He will re-capture his place in the
Section, and make of the quarter of the Odéon a new République
des Cordeliers. He will re-establish his position with Paris. He will
attempt to enter, and perhaps later to control, this new municipality. It
was for such an attitude that St. Just reproached him so bitterly in
the act of accusation of April 1794, while at the moment he was
adopting that attitude he was the mark of the most violent diatribe
from the Conservatives. Nothing defines Danton at this moment so
clearly as the fact that he alone of the popular party knew how to be
practical and to make enemies.
The month of August may be taken as the time when Danton had
to be most careful if he desired to preserve his place and to avoid a
fall into violence and unreason. It was the 2nd of that month (as we
have said) that saw Bailly’s election, the 5th that gave Danton a
personal shock, for on that date he received, for an office which he
really coveted and for which he was a candidate, but 193 votes out
of over 3000 present.
From that moment he devotes all his energy to reconstruction. The
first evidence of his new attitude appears with the early days of
September. Already the old meeting of the Cordeliers had been
changed into the club, and already his influence was gaining ground
again in the debates and in the local battalion of the National Guard,
when the news of Nancy came to Paris.
A conflict between the National Guard and the people, an example
of that with which Lafayette continually menaced Paris—the conflict
of the armed bourgeoisie and the artisans, or rather of the militia
used as a professional army against the people—this had happened
at last. It was an occasion for raving. Marat raved loudly, and the
royalists gave vent to not a little complacent raving on their side. In
the great question whether the army was to be democratic or not,
whether reaction was to possess its old disciplined arm, it would
seem that reaction had won, and France had seen a little rehearsal
of what in ten months was to produce the 17th of July.
In such conditions the attitude of the Cordeliers was of real
importance. During all Lafayette’s attempt to centralise the militia of
Paris this battalion had remained independent; its attitude during the
days of October, its defence of Marat in January, had proved this.
The crisis appeared to demand from this revolutionary body a strong
protest against the use of the militia as an army to be aimed against
the people. Such a protest might have been the cause of an
outbreak in Paris. Under these circumstances Danton—by what
arguments we cannot tell (for the whole affair is only known to us by
a few lines of Desmoulins)—obtained from his battalion a carefully-
worded pronouncement. “For all the high opinion we have of the
National Guards who took part in the affair of Nancy, we can express
no other sentiment than regret for what has happened.”[76] It was
moderate to the degree of the common-place, but it saved Danton
from the abyss and from the street.
There followed another check in which he showed once more his
power of self-control. The “Notables”—corresponding something to
the aldermen of our new municipal scheme in England—were to be
elected for Paris a little after the elections for the mayor and for the
governor of the Commune. Each Section was to elect three, and
Danton had so far regained his influence at home as to be elected
for the Théâtre Français.
Unfortunately the new constitution of Paris had been provided with
one of those checks whose main object it is to interfere with direct
representation. The choice of each Section was submitted to the
censure or the approval of all the others. It is by the judgment which
they pass that we can best judge the suspicion in which he was held
by the great bulk of his equals. A regular campaign was led against
him. The affair of Marat was dragged up, especially the warrant for
Danton’s arrest which the Châtelet had issued six months before.
That very favourite device in electioneering, the doubt as to real
candidature, was used. The voter, not over-well informed in a detail
of law (especially at a time when all law was being re-modelled), was
told that the warrant made Danton’s candidature illegal. They said he
was sold to Orleans, because he had haunted the Palais Royal and
because he hated Lafayette. The character of demagogue—the one
thing he desired to avoid—was pinned to his coat, and alone of all
the Notables he was rejected by forty-three Sections (five only voting
for him) in the week between the 9th and the 16th of September.[77]
In these five were the Postes, Invalides, Luxembourg. It was not
the purely popular quarters that supported Danton, but rather the
University and the lawyers.
He took his defeat as a signal for still greater reserve, letting his
name take perspective, and refusing by any act or phrase to obscure
his reputation with new issues. The tactics succeeded. When, in
October, a public orator was needed, they remembered him, and he
presents the deputation of the 10th of November. The circumstances
were as follows:—
The ministry which surrounded the King was frankly reactionary. I
do not mean that it was opposed to the constitution of the moment.
Perhaps the majority (and the less important) of its members would
have been loath to bring back anything approaching the old regime.
But there were in the Revolution not only the facts but the
tendencies, and in a period when every day brought its change, the
tendencies were watched with an extreme care. France may have
thought, seeing the federation on the Champ de Mars and the altar
where Talleyrand had said mass, that the Revolution was at an end
and the new state of affairs established in peace, but those in the
capital knew better; and the men immediately surrounding the King,
who saw the necessary consequences of his signing the civic
constitution, and the growing breach between himself and the
assembly—these men were on the King’s side. The affair at Nancy,
which had aroused so many passions, was the thing which finally
roused Parisian opinion; and at the very moment when the King is
secretly planning the flight to Montmédy—that flight which six
months later failed—Paris is for the first time claiming to govern the
councils of the kingdom.
It was the Sections that began the movement, those Sections
whose action was to have been so restricted, and which, upon the
contrary, were becoming the permanent organs of expression in the
capital.
The Section Mauconseil on the 22nd of October sent in a petition
for the dismissal of the cabinet and appealed to the National
Assembly. The Section of the National Library followed suit three
days later, and sent its petition not only to the Assembly but to the
King. It must be remembered that the legend of a good king
deceived by his advisers held at the time. Indeed, it survived the
flight to Varennes; it partly survived the 10th of August, and only the
research of recent times has proved clearly the continual intrigue of
which the King was the head.
On the 27th Mauconseil came forward again with a petition to the
mayor, Bailly, to call the general council of the Commune and
consider the complaints. Fourteen other Sections backed this
petition. Bailly hesitated, and while he temporised, all the forty-eight
Sections named commissioners and sent them to an informal
gathering at the Archbishopric.[78]
Danton was a member of this big committee and was made
secretary. He drew up an address; the mayor was twice summoned
to call the general council of the Commune. Hesitating and afraid,
Bailly finally did so, and after a violent debate the resolution passed.
Bailly was sent by the town to “present the Commune at the bar of
the Assembly and demand the recall” of the Ministers of Justice,
War, and the Interior—De Cicé, La Tour du Pin, and St. Priest.
Danton was taken out of the informal body to which he had acted
as secretary, and asked to be the orator of the legal Commune.
There followed on the 10th of November a very curious scene.
Bailly pitifully apologising with his eyes brought in the
representative body of Paris. It was present for the first time in the
National Parliament, and before three years were over Paris was to
be the mistress of the Parliament. At present they were out of place;
their demand frightened them. It needed Danton’s voice to reassure
them and to bring the opposing forces to a battle.
His voice, big, rough, and deep, perhaps with a slight provincial
accent, helped to strengthen the false idea that the gentlemen of the
Parliament had formed. This Danton, of whom they heard so much,
had appeared suddenly out of his right place—for he had no official
position—and the Right was furious.
Yet Danton’s harangue was moderate and sensible. There is,
indeed, one passage on the position of Paris in France which is
interesting because it is original, but the bulk of the speech is a string
of plain arguments. This passage is as follows:—
“That Commune, composed of citizens who belong in a fashion to
the eighty-three Departments—(The Right, No! no!)—jealously
desiring to fulfil in the name of all good citizens the duties of a
sentinel to the constitution, is in haste to express a demand which is
dear to all the enemies of tyranny—a demand which would be heard
from all the Sections of the Empire, could they be united with the
same promptitude as the Sections of Paris.”[79]
For the rest, he is continually insisting upon the right of the
Parliament to govern—the right, above all, of a representative body

You might also like