AP PSYCHOLOGY

1. AP PSYCHOLOGY AP TEST REVIEW QUESTIONS

2. Question – Personality Tests The validity of a personality test is best indicated by which of the following: • The correlation between test scores and some other relevant measure • The correlation between test scores and IQ • The inverse correlation of the variables being tested • The number of people in the test’s norming population • The number of questions in the test that can be objectively scored

3. Question – Social Psychology A group of students perceived a stationary point of light in a dark room as a moving object. When asked later how far the light had moved, their responses increased in similarity as they heard each others’ estimates. This demonstrates: • Obedience • Social facilitation • Conformity • Visual masking • Motion parallax

4. Question – States of Consciousness Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is highly correlated with which of the following? • A lack of genital arousal • Dreams • Tensed muscles • Considerable tossing and turning • Sleep apnea

5. Question – Abnormal Psych Rhoda sometimes experiences periods of major depression. At other times, she is extremely talkative and active, appears to be in a euphoric mood, goes days without sleeping, and reports that her thoughts are racing. The most likely diagnosis of Rhoda’s condition is: a. bipolar disorder b. dissociative identity disorder c. delusional disorder d. major depressive disorder e. schizophrenia

6. Question - Sensation Which of the following is true about rods and cones? • Rods facilitate black and white vision and cones facilitate color vision • Both rods and cones are most concentrated at the periphery of the retina • Both rods and cones are most concentrated at the blind spot of the retina • Rods and cones are distributed evenly throughout the retina • Rods are most useful than cones for perception in well-lit areas

7. Question - Memory A moviegoer who cannot identify the name of a film star remembers the name when a friend reviews a list of stars. This incident illustrates which two concepts in human memory • Rehearsal and chunking • Primacy and recency effect • Constructive and reconstructive memory • Sensory register and short-term memory • Recall and recognition

8. Question - Development According to Lawrence Kohlberg, children at the first level of moral reasoning make judgments about right and wrong on the basis of • Cultural norms • Social conventions • Religious beliefs • The likelihood of punishment • The approval of siblings and same-sex peers

9. Question - Sensation After constant exposure to a stimulus, our nerve cells fire less frequently. This can be explained by which of the following? • Weber’s law • Sensory adaptation • Signal detection • Absolute threshold sensitivity • The phi phenomenon

10. Question - Learning The reappearance, after a rest period, of an extinguished conditioned response is called • Acquisition • Generalization • Extinction • Discrimination • Spontaneous recovery

11. Question – Social Psychology Tension from an inconsistency between an individual’s attitudes and behavior is • Cognitive dissonance • Altruism • Deindividuation • Information propinquity • Constancy

12. Question - Neuroscience The section of the brain considered most vital to the initiations of feeding behaviors is the • Hippocampus • Hypothalamus • Superior olive • Suprachiasmatic nucleus • Substantianigra

13. Question - Statistics Which of the following is a measure of central tendency that is most influenced by extreme scores? • Median • Standard deviation • Mean • Analysis of variance • Mode

14. Question – Nature/Nurture Gender typing is best described as: • The realization that gender is stable, regardless of superficial behaviors such as dress • A preferential interest of a female child in the attention of the mother • A child showing ambivalence toward both the mother and father • Adolescents integrating social, sexual, intellectual, and ethical aspects into a self-identity • The acquisition of the roles associated with distinctions between male and female

15. Question – Social Psychology The common tendency to assume that the beliefs, values, attitudes or actions of one’s own group are superior to those of other groups is called • Deindividuation • Groupthink • Observer bias • Ethnocentrism • Reactance

16. Question - Therapy Aversion therapy to eliminate undesirable behaviors is most likely to be used by which of the following types of therapists? • Behavioral • Psychoanalytic • Cognitive • Reality • Humanistic

17. Question - Neuroscience A bundle of nerve fibers that interconnects the two brain hemispheres is the • Association areas • Thalamus • Corpus callosum • Sylvian fissure • Optic chiasm

18. Question - Neuroscience Which gland of the endocrine system controls the activity of the other glands? • Pancreas • Thyroid • Adrenal • Pituitary • Pineal

19. Question - Emotion The experience of an emotion, as described by the James-Lange theory, would follow which order? • stimulus, arousal, emotion • Stimulus, emotion, arousal • Emotion, arousal, stimulus • Arousal, stimulus, emotion • Arousal, emotion, stimulus

20. Question - Memory An example of episodic memory is the memory of • one’s high school graduation • The capital of a state • What the musical note C sounds like • How to type • A mood that is triggered by the experience of a particular scent

21. Question – Social Psychology When members of a group who tend to agree on an issue become more extreme in their opinion after the issue is discussed, which of the following has taken place? • Deindividuation • Depersonalization • Groupthink • Group norming • Group polarization

22. Question - Neuroscience In neurons, neurotransmitters are released at the: • Axons • Cell bodies • Dendrites • Receptor sites • Synaptic vesicles

23. Question - Emotion The frustration-aggression hypothesis views aggression as • Unconscious • Physiological • Innate • Reactive • Cognitive

24. Question - Learning A child has learned that her grandparents ignore rather than reward her tantrums. Which of the following operant principles are the grandparents using to control the child’s behavior? • Positive reinforcement • Negative reinforcement • Delayed reinforcement • Extinction • Stimulus substitution

25. Question - Therapy In the treatment of patients, which of the following psychologists made no attempt to offer formal diagnosis, advice, or interpretation of patients’ unconscious motives? • Carl Rogers • Aaron Beck • Albert Ellis • Sigmund Freud • Carl Jung

26. Question - Motivation Of the following, which theory of motivation emphasizes the urge for an optimal level of stimulation? • Instinct • Frustration-aggression • Arousal • Incentive • Evolutionary

27. Question - Personality Which of the following did Alfred Adler suggest is the primary driving force in the development of personality? • Resolving the Electra complex • Overcoming the inferiority complex • Extinguishing reinforcement history • Analyzing the collective unconscious • Repressing the libido

28. Question - Statistics Which of the following correlation coefficients most likely represents the relationship between length of sleep deprivation and level of alertness? • 1.35 • 0.85 • 0.01 • -0.4 • -1.25

29. Question - Language Noam Chomsky hypothesized that humans learn language through: • Conditioning and reinforcement • An innate language acquisition device • General cognitive development • Interpersonal communication • Trial-and-error

30. Question - Neuroscience Computer-generated color images of the brain that provide information about glucose metabolism are produced by which of the following techniques? • Electroencephalography (EEG) • Electromyography (EMG) • Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) • Positron-Emission Tomography (PET) • Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT)

31. Question – Social Psychology Most professionals from the United States rate themselves better in performance and competence than their average peer. This is an example of • self-actualization • Objective self-awareness • Enlightened self-schemas • Self-serving bias • Fundamental attribution error

32. Question - Sensation The gate control theory attempts to explain how • The brain analyzes patterns by analyzing changes in brightness over broad areas • Filtering of excess information results in reduced response to constant stimulation • The nervous system blocks or allows pain signals to pass to the brain • Differing regions of the tongue are more sensitive to different tastes • Chemicals released by one animal can shape the behavior

33. Question - Personality The five-factor theory of personality (The Big Five) does NOT include which of the following characteristics? • Intelligence • Conscientiousness • Extraversion • Agreeableness e. Neuroticism/Stability

34. Question - Development A researcher asks a young child what she did yesterday. The child replies, “I goed to the park.” This is best described as an example of: • Overregularization of grammar rules • Contradictory morphemes • The deep structure of language • Incorrect pragmatics • Semantic error

35. Question - Statistics In a normal distribution, approximately what percent of the scores occur within one standard deviation above and below the mean? • 5% • 16% • 33% • 68% • 97%

36. Question - Approaches Janet believes her brother Ralph is depressed because he has a distorted view of reality; he has unrealistically negative thoughts. Which of the following theories comes closest to describing Janet’s orientation to abnormal behavior? • Biological • Psychodynamic • Behavioral • Systems • Cognitive