AP Psychology Final

John B. Watson is best known as the founder of

Behaviorism

Rafael takes medically prescribed amphetamines for a sleep disorder. Which disorder is most likely being treated?

Narcolepsy

Which of the following best illustrates the forgetting curve?

Erik studied Italian in college. After he graduated, he went backpacking in Europe, where he realized he had forgotten a lot of Italian. Years later, he went on another trip to Italy and was surprised to discover that he remembered about the same amount of Italian as during his first trip.

Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system results in which of the following?

A decrease in heart rate

Although Paul seems bright and capable to his parents and friends, he has been failing in school. Paul agrees to speak with a psychologist, who suggests that his problems stem from internal processes such as unrealistic expectations and negative thinking. The psychologist’s view is typical of which of the following perspectives?

Cognitive

Introspection as practiced by early structuralists is best illustrated by which of the following behaviors?

Describing one’s immediate sensations while looking at a rose

Martha is an undergraduate student who is interested in pursuing a career in psychology. She wants to use her knowledge of psychology to help employees become more productive in the workplace. Which field of psychology should Martha select in graduate school?

Industrial-Organizational

Achariya is lost. She quickly scans the crowd and decides to ask an elderly woman for directions because she believes the woman will be kind. Which method of problem solving did Achariya most likely use?

The representativeness heuristic

Andi’s best friend always screamed when she was in high places, and now Andi also screams when she is in high places. Which of the following theorists would say that Andi screams because she saw her friend scream?

Albert Bandura

A person will most likely develop aphasia as a result of damage to which of the following parts of the brain?

Wernickes Area

In a classic study, a group of rats learned to run through a maze to obtain food, and another group explored the maze without receiving food. Later, both groups found the food equally quickly. This occurred as a result of what type of learning?

Latent learning

Which statement best describes latent learning?

Learning that happens without obvious reinforcement and may not be demonstrated until there is motivation to do so.

A four-year-old is frightened after falling down the stairs at his grandmother’s house. Now he feels anxious whenever his parents mention visiting her house. In classical conditioning terms, what are the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS)?

Conditioned stimulus: grandmother’s house; Unconditioned stimulus: falling

Of the following, what would an evolutionary psychologist most likely investigate?

The reason why many people have an innate fear of the dark

Which phenomenon describes the finding that intelligence scores have increased over several decades?

Flynn effect

A common psychological effect of alcohol intake is:

Reduced inhibition

Amy learned some French as a child from a babysitter. Years later, she learns French faster than her classmates in college. Amy’s rapid learning is most likely due to:

Implicit memory

Richard drinks several caffeinated sodas to curb withdrawal symptoms. Caffeine is in the same class of drugs as which of the following?

Cocaine

Cesar must memorize a long string of numbers in 60 seconds and recall them immediately. Which strategy should he use?

Chunking

A person listens to tones presented in pairs and determines whether they are the same or different in pitch. This experiment measures:

Just-noticeable difference

Maeve refuses to change her college major because she believes the time already spent would be wasted. Maeve is experiencing:

Sunk-cost fallacy

A new personality test produces consistent scores over time but has only a weak correlation with a Big Five inventory. The test has:

High reliability and low validity

A child who learns that knives are sharp avoids all forks and knives. This is an example of:

Generalization

Which of the following best provides evidence that genetics plays a role in intelligence?

Identical twins reared together are more similar than identical twins reared apart

After surgery, rats fail to remember a maze they previously learned. This suggests that:

Experience impairs memory in learning a maze

Dr. Adele asks students how well a study method works and concludes it is effective. Which flaw best explains why her conclusion may be inaccurate?

Self-report bias

A coffee association wants to measure the effectiveness of billboards. What is the best operational definition of effectiveness?

Amount of time people look at the billboard

In an experiment testing the effects of aggression, aggressive behavior would be the:

Dependent variable

Children watch either an aggressive or nonaggressive TV program and are later observed for aggression. What is the independent variable?

Type of television program

A doctoral student includes children in a research study. Which statement about consent is correct?

Children can express approval, but only guardians can provide consent

When is it permissible for a psychologist to share a client’s test scores with another person?

When the client provides written permission

A professor wants to study student habits using a subset of students that represents the entire student body. Which feature best addresses this goal?

Random sampling

A professor compares exam scores from an 8 a.m. class and a 1 p.m. class and concludes one group is inferior. What is the biggest problem?

Time of day is a confounding variable

A study examines the effects of cell phone use on driving safety. Cell phone use is the:

Independent variable

Why is it important for researchers to use precise operational definitions?

To be able to replicate the experiment

A researcher concludes that encyclopedias in the home improve grades because the two are correlated. What error was made?

Inferring causation from correlation

Dr. Nance studies the effects of psychoactive drugs on memory and decision-making. Which procedure is intended to control for preexisting differences between groups of participants?

Random assignment

Survey research shows that people with high empathy tend to rate violent humor lower than people with low empathy. Based on these results, one can conclude that:

Level of empathy correlates negatively with enjoyment of violent humor

Which of the following statements best describes the placebo effect?

If people expect a treatment to work, it will, even if they receive a fake treatment

Researchers find a significant positive correlation between hours of sleep and grades. Which conclusion is justified?

Students who earn good grades tend to sleep more than those who do not

Which research approach would be best for testing the hypothesis that the presence of certain odors causes people to gamble more?

Experimental

Synesthesia is rare and occurs in only a few people in a million. Which research method would researchers most likely use to study it?

Case study

Clive Wearing suffers from severe anterograde amnesia. Which ethical consideration is most relevant regarding his case?

We should not know Clive’s identity, especially while he is still living

In an experiment where children watch a video of a person interacting with a doll, what is the dependent variable?

The way children interact with the doll

Professor Saito investigates whether online teaching affects intelligence scores. What is the independent variable?

The type of course instruction

Students scored higher when taking a standardized test at their home school than at a neighboring school. Which conclusion can be made?

Participants scored better when testing in a familiar location

A test has a mean of 80 and a standard deviation of 4. Which score is within one standard deviation of the mean?

77

Two encoding methods produce different average learning results, but the difference is not statistically significant. What is the most appropriate conclusion?

There is a possibility that the difference occurred by chance

Based on the IQ score distribution, how many students earned scores higher than two standard deviations above the mean?

3

Which statement is true of the frequency distributions shown?

Distribution B has more variation than distributions A or C

Which brain structure is most responsible for emotional reactions (heart rate) after seeing spiders and snakes?

Amygdala

Which part of the nervous system is indicated by the arrows pointing to the brain and spinal cord?

Central nervous system

Which scatterplot illustrates the weakest correlation coefficient?

B

Ten participants rated their self-worth. What is the mean of the following scores: 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 10?

6

Banya earned the following quiz scores: 2, 3, 17, 10, 2, 3, 8, 2, 7. What is the mode of the scores?

2

Which of the following aspects of classical conditioning is demonstrated by Quadrant 1 in the figure?

Unconditioned response to an unconditioned stimulus

(Food → salivation, before conditioning)

Below is a transcript of a case study about an individual named Arjun. Arjun was diagnosed with epilepsy and underwent surgery that severed the connections between the two hemispheres of the brain. After surgery, he could verbally identify items presented to his right visual field but not his left. Which of the following parts of the brain was severed to address Arjun’s epileptic seizures?

Corpus callosum

In a normal distribution of scores on assessments like those for intelligence, which of the following statements is true about the area that falls between one standard deviation above and one standard deviation below the mean?

It contains the middle 68% of the distribution

Dr. Ramsey is studying the effectiveness of different operant conditioning methods to encourage studying behavior in students. The data are presented in the graph. According to the data, which of the following is true of motivating students to study more?

Positive reinforcement is the most successful