2.2-2.8 Cognition AP PSYCH EXAM

Nudge

A school places healthy snacks at eye level in the cafeteria to encourage better choices.

Divergent Thinking

Sophia comes up with multiple unique ideas for a new product.

Prototype

Ella pictures a golden retriever when thinking of a dog.

Gambler's Fallacy

Mark believes a slot machine is 'due' for a win after losing several times.

Functional Fixedness

Tom struggles to use a book as a doorstop because he only thinks of it as something to read.

Convergent Thinking

Emma narrows down multiple answers to pick the best one.

Priming

Daniel, after seeing the word 'yellow,' recognizes 'banana' faster.

Heuristic

Liam guesses a password based on common patterns instead of trying every possible combination.

Schemas

Mike, a car enthusiast, has a lot of knowledge, ideas, and experiences all linked to his idea of 'car.'

Availability Heuristic

John fears plane crashes more than car accidents because of media coverage.

Sunk-Cost Fallacy

Olivia stays in a bad movie because she already paid for the ticket.

Mental Set

Emily keeps trying the same method to solve a puzzle, even though a new one would work better.

Algorithm

Sophia follows a step-by-step math formula to solve a problem.

Confirmation Bias

Amy only reads news that supports her political views.

Insight

Jake suddenly realizes how to solve a riddle.

Metacognition

Alex reflects on his own study habits to improve his learning by thinking about how he learns best.

Belief Perseverance

Lisa refuses to change her belief despite contradicting evidence.

Representativeness Heuristic

Sarah assumes a quiet person is a librarian rather than a football player.

Recognition

Jessica correctly picks out the name of the U.S. president from a multiple-choice list.

Proactive Interference

Jake keeps writing last year's date instead of the current one.

The Forgetting Curve

Tom quickly forgets most of his high school Spanish within a year after graduation.

Constructive Memory

Carlos vividly remembers his uncle telling a childhood story, but when he asks his mother about it, she tells him it never actually happened.

Structural Processing

Chris remembers that a word was written in bold, but not its meaning.

Effortful Processing

Ava studies for her history test by taking detailed notes.

Encoding Failure

Sarah can't recall the details of a penny because she's never really paid attention.

Recall

Tom writes an essay about World War II from memory without any prompts.

Sensory Memory

Olivia briefly sees a flash of 6 numbers and can remember the first or last number if asked a split second after they disappear.

Multi-Store Model

James first sees a phone number (sensory memory), rehearses it (short-term memory), and later recalls it when needed (long-term memory).

Phonemic Processing

Olivia remembers a word because she repeated its sound several times.

Source Amnesia

Chris recalls that the school dance is in 2 weeks, but forgets where saw it posted.

State-Dependent Memory

Ethan remembers a lecture better when he's in the same relaxed state as when he learned it.

Iconic Memory

Jake sees a lightning bolt and can still 'see' it for a moment even after it disappears.

Long-Term Potentiation (LTP)

Sarah gets better at remembering Spanish vocab with repeated study because the same neural pathways are repeatedly activated.

Mood-Congruent Memory

Ava recalls sad memories when she is feeling down.

Recency Effect

Olivia remembers the last few words of a speech because she heard them most recently.

Chunking

Sophie memorizes her credit card number by breaking it into groups of four digits.

Semantic Memory

Liam knows that Paris is the capital of France.

Massed Practice

Noah crams for his psychology exam the night before, but forgets most of the material later.

Shallow Processing

Tom quickly memorizes a list of words by their appearance but forgets them soon after.

Retroactive Interference

Emma forgets old locker combinations after learning a new one.

Procedural Memory

Sophie ties her shoes without thinking about how.

Primacy Effect

Ethan remembers the first items on a list best.

Method of Loci

Jack remembers his grocery list by mentally placing each item in different rooms of his house.

Retrograde Amnesia

David loses memories from before a car accident but can form new ones.

Central Executive

Mark uses this in order to switch between planning his weekend and solving a math problem, managing multiple tasks at once.

Retrieval Cues

Liam struggles to remember an answer on a test, but when he sees a key word in another question, it jogs his memory.

Split-Half Reliability

Ravi takes a long logic test. The test makers check reliability by splitting the questions in half and confirming that both halves produce similar scores.

Predictive Validity

Hana's medical school entrance exam accurately predicts how well she will perform in medical school.

Growth Mindset

Amina struggles with math but believes she can improve through practice and effort, so she keeps working until she gets better.

Fixed Mindset

Robert believes intelligence is fixed, so when he fails a physics test, he assumes he'll never be good at science and stops trying.

Achievement Tests

Tariq takes an end-of-year history exam to assess how much he has learned over the course of the school year.

Flynn Effect

Samuel's grandfather scored 110 on an IQ test in the 1960s, but today, the average score has risen due to better education and nutrition.

Content Validity

Zainab is developing a math test, ensuring it includes algebra, geometry, and arithmetic—key topics the test is supposed to measure.

Test-Retest Reliability

Jorge takes the same personality test twice in a month and gets nearly identical results, showing the test is reliable.

Standardization

Luca takes a college entrance exam where every student receives the same set of instructions, questions, and testing conditions to ensure fairness.

General Intelligence (g)

Aisha performs well in math, reading, and logic-based tasks, demonstrating a high level across multiple cognitive abilities.

Normal Curve

Fatima's SAT score falls near the middle of the distribution, where most test-takers score, illustrating the bell-shaped distribution.

Stereotype Lift

Kenji, an Asian-American student, hears that 'Asians are naturally good at math' and, feeling more confident, performs better than usual on his test.

Stereotype Threat

Amira, a female engineering student, feels anxious before a math test after hearing that 'women aren't good at math.' As a result, her performance suffers.

Aptitude Tests

Leila takes a college entrance exam that measures her potential to succeed in higher education rather than what she has already learned.

Mental Age

Jamal, a 10-year-old, scores on an intelligence test at the level of an average 12-year-old.