AP Psychology Practice Test

The longer an individual is exposed to a strong odor, the less aware of the odor the individual becomes. This phenomenon is known as sensory;

Adaptation

Which type of psychologist would be interested primarily in studying whether people behave differently in groups than they do when alone?

social

The basic purpose of the DSM-IV-TR is to;

provides a set of diagnostic categories for classifying psychological disorders

An individual survives a period of captivity and exhibits behaviors that include anxiety, inability to concentrate, depression, edginess and the reexperience of stressful events. These symptoms illustrate which of the following disorders?

posttraumatic stress disorder

Which of the following theoretical frameworks would argue most strongly that a healthy child will choose what is good for his or her growth?

humanistic

The ability to choose specific to learn about, while filtering out or ignoring other information, is called.

selective attention

A two-year-old child is frightened by a small dog. A few weeks later, the same child sees a cat and becomes frightened. The child's reaction is most likely an example which of the following?

stimuli generalization

A researcher asks elementary,junior high,senior high and college students to define the term cheating and analyze differences in their definitions across age groups. This is an example of which type of study?

cross-sectional

Rudolph spends hours painting in his studio, even though he sells few pictures. Which of the following explains Rudolph's creative productivity?

intrinsic motivation

Which of the following is the definition of discrimination that most directly applies to perception?

recognizing an object as distinct from its surroundings

Which is a definition of discrimination that most directly applies to classical conditioning?

learning to respond differently to similar stimuli

Which is a definition of discrimination that most directly applies to social psychology?

differential treatment, usually negative, based on group membership

The correlations between the IQ scores of identical twins reared apart are lower those of identical twin reared together. This difference is best explained by which of the following?

environment plays an important role in determining IQ

Contemporary definitions of abnormality might include all of the following criteria EXCEPT;

gender

A test that fails to predict what it is designed to predict lacks;

validity

Neurosurgeons cut the corpus callosum in the brain disrupting communications between the right and left hemispheres to;

prevent the spread of epileptic seizures

Keisha was able to roll over at two months, crawl at five months, and walk ten month. This sequence of development is most likely due to;

maturation

A psychologist is attempting to get Wade, an 8-year-old autistic boy, to make eye contact when she speaks to him. She gives Wade a piece of candy every time he looks at her face This treatment illustrates which of the following therapeutic approaches.

behavioral

Which of the following forms of therapy most likely involves a confrontational atmosphere between the therapist and the client?

rational-emotive-therapy

A person who has a brain injury is having difficulty seeing and hearing. These symptoms indicate that damage has occurred in the;

occipital and temporal lobes

Individuals who accept personal responsibility for their life experiences may be characterized as having

an internal locus of control

A student participates in a month-long sleep study designed to examine free-running circadian rhythms. If all time cues are removed, the student's total sleep-wake cycle is likely to;

average about 25hours

If the variance of a set of scores is 100, the standard deviation will be

10

The overall purpose of psychoanalytic therapy is to

help the client in therapy gain new insight into himself or herself.

For language test with normally distributed scores, the mean was 70 and the standard deviation as 10. Approximately what percentage of test takers scores 60 and above?

84

Which of the following are most involved in the action potential of neuron?

sodium and potassium

Which of the following would be best used to measure the relationship between age and reaction time?

correlation

Which component of the limbic system has an essential role in the formation of new memories?

hippocampus

The human vestibular sense is most closely associated with;

semicircular canals

A central nervous system depressant that produces a false feeling of well-being and efficiency and results in slower reaction time to stimulation is;

alcohol

Of the following research methods, which can best establish a cause-and-effect relationship?

an experiment

A researcher dabs color on a 16-month-old's face and places the child in front of a mirror. Which of the following developmental milestones has been reached if the child realizes that there is something wrong with its face?

recogniton of self

A monkey is conditioned to flinch at the sound of a bell that was previously paired with a puff of air to the monkey's cheek. Which of the following explanations would be consistent with a cognitive interpretation of this conditioning?

the monkey interperts the bell as a signal that the puff of air will follow

Alfred Binet's most important contribution to psychology was in the area;

intelligence testing

Which of the following is most likely to characterize the behavior of the students who have high achievement motivation and are intrinsically motivated to play a musical instrument?

if permitted to choose their own piece of music, they will select moderately difficult pieces that they can master if they practice them conscientiously

Which of the following is considered an explanation of why bystander intervention is less likely to occur if there is a large number of witnesses to a crime;

diffusion of responsibility

A student who strongly believes that genetic influence is the major contributor to human personality is analyzing data gathered about identical twins who had been separated at birth and reunited in adulthood. The student observes many striking similarities in personality and habits within the twin pairs but does not notice differences within the twin pairs that might argue against the student's belief;

The student's behavior illustrates which of the following?

confirmation bias

A schema can be described as;

a mental construct

John Garcia showed that when rats ingested a novel substance before becoming nauseated from radiation or drugs, they acquired a

conditioned taste aversion for the substance

Which of the following is a possible reason why cats can see better at night than can humans?

cats have a higher proportion of rods to cones

Which of the following reflects the inborn and stable rudiments of personality, such as excitability?

temperament

After seeing her parents give her brother a dollar for cleaning his room, Sarah begins cleaning her own room. According to social-learning theorists, Sarah's behavior is an example of which of the following?

observational learning

In Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, living up to one's' potential and striving for personal fulfillment are referred to as;

self-actualization needs

The technique of assessing personality by asking a person to make up a story based on a picture presented by the researcher is an example of which of the following types of tests?

projective

John.B. Watson was a pioneer in which of the following perspectives of psychology?

behaviorism

Which of the following is considered the fundamental building block of the nervous system;

neuron

the psychological effects of alcohol are powerfully influenced by user's

expectations

Solomon Asch's findings on conformity might best be used to explain why

adolescents follow fads in dress in hairstyle

The humanistic perspective in psychology suggests that;

all humans are good by nature

The humans brain differs from the brains of the most other animals by the relative amount of brain mass devoted to which of the following?

cerebral cortex

Which of the following is an example of retrograde amnesia?

alyse cannot remember any details of what happened right before her car accident

An individual who sees and feels imaginary spiders crawling up his arms and legs is experiencing;

a hallucination

Research indicates that many animals are more likely to associate sickness with a taste they experienced in conjunction with the illness than with a tone or light. This finding supports which of the following claims?

animals may be biologically prepared to learn some things over other things

Which of the following is associated with schizophrenia?

enlarged, fluid-filled areas in the brain

According to the psychoanalytic view, depression is caused by;

unresolved issues experiences of loss from childhood

Which of the following structures of the brain has been linked with the regulation of hunger and thirst?

hypothalamus

Sigmund freud once compared psychological development to the migration of a population: "As time passes most of the group moves on, but some of the members remain at an earlier location."

freud is describing what concept?

fixation

One perspective in clinical psychology proposes that adaptive and abnormal behaviors can be developed through similar processes. Which of the following terms best characterizes this approach to abnormal behavior?

behavioral

Which of the following treatments is most frequently used to eliminate specific phobias?

systematic desenitization

Which of the following terms is used in hunger and weight-control research to denote the concept that each person has body-fat level that remains fixed and resistant to change?

set point

A 14-month-old toddler is placed is an unfamiliar situation with child's mother, who then leaves the room for a time. When the mother returns, the child squirms and tries to get away from the mother when picked up, but also seems distresses when placed back on the floor.Mary Ainsworth would consider this evidence of which of the following;

a resistant or ambivalent attachment style

The two components of schachter and Singer's theory of emotion are;

physiological arousal and behavior

Which of the following sets of scores has the greatest standard deviation?

2,7,9,22

A college student experiences a loss of sensation in her right arm before exams. Doctors can find no physiological basis for her condition. This student is most likely experiencing which of the following kinds of disorders?

somatoform

Rats in experiment learned to associate sweetened water with a drug that causes immune suppression. Later, the sweetened water alone produced the immune suppression. This outcome is an example of which of the following?

classical conditioning

Early behaviors believed that psychology should NOT focus on "the mind" because "the mind" is;

unobservable

Which of the following explains the behavior of normally law-abiding people who act destructively when they are part of a crowd?

deindividuation

The psychologists who first developed encounter groups and sensitivity-training groups based their work on which of the following approaches to therapy?

humanistic

Greg stays up all night during finals week studying for exams. As the week progresses, his muscles tighten and he develops a stiff neck. By the last day of finals he is taking more frequent breaks, leaning back in his desk chair, and staring off into space. He arrives for the last test with a sore throat and headache'

general adaptation syndrome

which of the following is evidence of the reliability of a new intelligence test?

the correlation between scores of participants who take two forms of the test is +.90

The practice of soling problems by using a mental shortcut is an example of;

the use of a heuristic

The minimum intensity at which a stimulus can be detected at least 50% of the time is;

absolute threshold

Remembering how to roller skate involves which of the following kinds of memory?

procedural

Prozac functions as an antidepressant medication because it;

blocks the reuptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin

As club president discovers that contributions of club members drop when the total contribution of all members is published rather than the contributions of individuals. This drop can be explained by the phenomenon of;

social loafing

A researcher studies the effects of brain lesions in rats. This research study reflects which of the following perspectives?

biological

Material that an individual cannot remember but is on the "the tip of the tongue" is

available, but not accessible

A teacher her students to take turns by giving them stars to trade for snacks at the end of the day. This technique is called:

token economy

Which piagetian stage of cognitive development is characterized by mastery of conservation tasks?

concrete operations

Which of the following do individuals experience when their behavior is inconsistent with their attitude?

cognitive dissonance

The evolutionary perspective (sociobiology) argue that;

humans are genetically programmed to ensure that there is a new generation of the species

When Jason practices the drums, he tends not to hear the phone. Today he is expecting a call from a record producer and answers the phone each time it rings even when he is practicing the drums. Which of following explains why Jason ears the phone today?

signal detection theory

Which of the following is NOT a gestalt principle of perceptual organization?

intensity

Which of the following is the correct sequence of anatomical structures through which and auditory stimulus passes before it is perceived as sound?

auditory canal, eardrum,ossicles,oval window, cochlea

Aron Beck suggested tat negative beliefs cause depression. To help change these negative beliefs, Beck used which of the following therapies?

cognitive

When Shelly first had cable television service installed, Public Broadcasting (PBS) was on channel 9. Her cable company them switched PBS to channel 16. Shelly no has trouble remembering that PBS is on channel 16 not on channel 9. This memory problem represents.

proactive interference

Two friends attribute their high math scores to their high level of effort and ability in math and their low spanish scores to their teacher's subjective grading and favoritism. In this situation these students are exhibiting;

the self-serving bias

All of the following are conditions that may lead to conflict within organizations EXCEPT;

superordinate goals

Which of the following is most descriptive of antisocial personality disorder?

an inability to feel empathy for others and a lack of remorse for actions that harm others

Which of the following assessment tools is LEAST likely to be used by a psychoanalytically oriented psychologist

Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory

Which of the following neurotransmitters is most directly associated with Alzheimer's disease

acetylcholine

Which perspective views the human conditions as a mixture of unconscious desires and conflicts?

psychoanalytic

Which of the following perspectives was used by Raymond Cattell as a basis for his personality measure known as the 16PF test?

trait

According to the theory of fundamental attribution error, when explaining the failures of others we usually underestimate the significance of;

situational factors

Language acquisition cannot be fully accounted for which of the following reasons

language use is creative

A student hypothesizes that high school students consuming different flavors of a drink before a spelling test will perform differently. A study to test the hypothesis finds that with a bitter drink, performance is best at 6 hours after drinking it, whereas with a sweet drink, performance is best 1 hour after drinking it.

what are the independent variables?

flavor of drink and time of consumption

which of the following is the dependent variable?

participants' spelling test scores

an interaction between variables complicates the researcher's explanation of findings. which of the following are most likely involved in this interaction?

flavor of drink & time of consumption

which of the following is characterized by a periodic appearance of sleep spindles

stage 2 sleep

social facilitation theory focuses on situations in which the presence of others causes an individuals performance to;

improve