AP Psychology Full-length practice exam 1

A four-year-old watches an adult hide candy under a cup while a second adult is out of the room. When asked where the absent adult will look for the candy upon returning, the four-year-old says, 'Under the cup, where it really is.' This response demonstrates the child has NOT yet developed:

A manager attributes her team's poor quarterly performance entirely to her employees' laziness, ignoring the tight deadlines and insufficient resources they faced. This attribution error is called:

A teacher reads a list of 20 words aloud and asks students to recall as many as possible. Most students remember the FIRST few words better than the middle ones. This is BEST explained by the:

According to Freud's psychoanalytic theory, a person who repeatedly makes self-defeating decisions after a painful divorce is unconsciously recreating familiar patterns from childhood. This dynamic best illustrates which Freudian concept?

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), commonly prescribed for depression, work by:

Spearman proposed that intelligence can be described as a single general factor (g) underlying all mental abilities. Gardner challenged this view by proposing that humans have multiple distinct intelligences. Which of the following correctly distinguishes these two positions?

A patient suffers a stroke and afterward can understand spoken language and read normally, but their own speech is slow, effortful, and limited to short ungrammatical phrases like "want... water... now." This pattern is consistent with damage to which area, and is known as which type of aphasia?

A rat in a Skinner box presses a lever and receives a food pellet. Over time, lever-pressing increases. If pressing the lever now causes a mild electric shock instead of food, lever-pressing will decrease through the process of:

A researcher lesions the lateral hypothalamus of a rat. Which behavioral change is most likely to result?

Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Carl Rogers's person-centered therapy both belong to which broad personality tradition?

A researcher hypothesizes that a particular vitamin improves memory. To test this, they survey people who already take the vitamin and ask, "Has your memory improved since starting?" Most report yes. Why is this study design vulnerable to confirmation bias even before considering placebo effects?

Hans Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) describes the body's response to prolonged stress in three sequential stages. In the correct order, these stages are:

Elizabeth Loftus's research on eyewitness testimony demonstrated that memory is reconstructive rather than reproductive. Which experimental finding most directly supports this conclusion?

Maria suffered a stroke affecting Broca's area. Which symptom is she most likely to exhibit?

Kohlberg presented the Heinz dilemma (stealing a drug to save a spouse) to assess moral reasoning. A person who reasons 'Heinz should steal because the law fails to account for every special case, and higher moral principles take precedence over legal rules' is operating at which level?

The Weber-Fechner law describes the relationship between physical stimulus intensity and the resulting psychological perception. Which statement best captures this principle?

The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus plays a KEY role in:

Bandura's concept of self-efficacy refers to a person's belief in their ability to execute behaviors necessary for a specific outcome. Which factor does Bandura identify as the most powerful source of self-efficacy?

Asked to guess whether someone is a librarian or a salesperson based on the description "quiet, organized, enjoys reading," most people choose librarian — even when told salespeople outnumber librarians 75 to 1 in the population. This demonstrates:

The DSM-5 is the primary tool used by mental health professionals in the United States to:

A student studies a chapter in sections, pausing to quiz herself after each section rather than re-reading it. Research on memory encoding predicts that the self-quizzing method will produce better long-term retention because it relies primarily on:

In the Atkinson-Shiffrin model of memory, which store holds sensory information for only a fraction of a second before it either fades or is passed to short-term memory?

After receiving a painful injection at the doctor's office, a toddler begins to cry at the sight of the white lab coat, even before anything happens. Which term describes the white coat in this scenario?

A chess grandmaster can glance at a mid-game board for five seconds and reconstruct piece positions far better than a novice can. This difference is best explained by the grandmaster's superior use of:

Which of the following best describes the hallmark features of major depressive disorder (MDD) according to DSM-5 criteria?

After studying Spanish for two years, Elena now has difficulty remembering the French she learned in high school. This forgetting is best explained by:

Maria can vividly recall the day she received her college acceptance letter — where she was, what she was wearing, who she told first. She also knows that the capital of France is Paris, though she can't remember when or where she learned that fact. Maria's recollection of the acceptance day is BEST described as ____ memory; her knowledge that Paris is the capital is ____ memory.

A locksmith eventually figures out a complex puzzle after a long period of being stuck. The moment the solution appears, it seems sudden and complete — not the result of incremental trial-and-error. This BEST illustrates:

A cognitive psychologist studies how people decide whether an object belongs to a category. Participants judge a robin as a 'bird' faster than they judge a penguin as a 'bird.' This finding is best explained by:

A therapist treats a patient with anxiety disorder by teaching deep breathing and relaxation, then gradually exposing the patient to feared stimuli from least to most anxiety-provoking. This technique is called:

Activities like winning a game, eating delicious food, and using addictive drugs all increase activity in brain pathways that release which neurotransmitter — central to the brain's reward system?

A patient is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Which cluster of symptoms is categorized as 'positive symptoms' in DSM-5?

In split-brain patients (whose corpus callosum has been severed), an image is flashed briefly to the LEFT visual field. The patient is then asked to identify what they saw. What is the typical result?

According to Craik and Lockhart's levels of processing framework, which of the following encoding strategies should produce the BEST long-term retention of a list of new vocabulary words?

When a stimulus reaches sufficient strength, a neuron fires an action potential. If the stimulus becomes EVEN STRONGER, what happens to that single neuron's action potential?

Solomon Asch's conformity experiments involved participants judging the lengths of lines while confederates gave obviously wrong answers. The key finding was that:

Which structure of a neuron is primarily responsible for RECEIVING signals from other neurons?

Which brain structure, part of the limbic system, plays a central role in processing fear and emotional memories?

After a football game, fans of the winning team say 'We won!' while fans of the losing team say 'They lost.' This tendency is an example of:

When solving a problem, someone always tries the same solution strategy that worked in the past, even when a novel approach would be more efficient. This tendency is called:

A split-brain patient has the word 'APPLE' flashed to the left visual field only. When asked to say what was seen, the patient says 'nothing,' but when asked to point with the left hand to the object seen, correctly points to an apple. This finding best demonstrates:

Which part of the neuron receives incoming signals from other neurons and carries them toward the cell body?

A researcher assigns participants to be either 'guards' or 'prisoners' in a simulated prison and finds that the guards quickly began abusing power and the prisoners became submissive. This describes Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment. Its primary psychological lesson is that:

In language, phonemes are BEST described as:

A study finds that cancer patients who participate in a structured social support group have significantly longer survival times than those who do not. Critics argue the study may confound social support with the effects of patients discussing healthier behaviors. To control for this alternative explanation, the researchers should:

Albert Ellis developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) based on his ABC model. In this model, 'B' stands for:

REM sleep is characterized by:

According to Piaget, a child who can think logically about concrete objects but cannot yet reason about abstract hypothetical situations is in which cognitive stage?

Which neurotransmitter is most directly implicated in Parkinson's disease due to the degeneration of neurons in the substantia nigra that produce it?

A child watches her older brother jam his finger in a car door and cry. For several weeks, she refuses to approach cars. She has not jammed her own finger. Which learning explanation best accounts for her new fear response?

When a person sees a snake on a hiking trail, their heart rate accelerates, pupils dilate, and breathing quickens. Which division of the nervous system is PRIMARILY responsible for these responses?

Mary Ainsworth's Strange Situation procedure identified different attachment styles. An infant who explores freely when the caregiver is present, protests briefly when the caregiver leaves, and quickly calms and resumes play when the caregiver returns shows which attachment pattern?

According to Noam Chomsky's theory of language acquisition, children develop language so rapidly and uniformly across cultures because humans have an innate:

Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance predicts that when people behave in ways inconsistent with their attitudes, they will:

Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiment provided evidence for observational learning. Which of the following findings from that study best supports the concept of vicarious reinforcement?

Knowing how to ride a bicycle without consciously thinking about each movement is BEST classified as which type of long-term memory?

Sometimes when trying to remember a word, you feel as if it's "on the tip of your tongue" — you know related information about it but can't produce the word itself. This phenomenon BEST illustrates:

Harlow's studies of rhesus monkeys raised with wire versus cloth surrogate mothers showed that when frightened, monkeys clung to the cloth mother even when only the wire mother provided food. This finding challenged which prior assumption about attachment?

In Milgram's obedience experiments, what factor most reliably reduced participants' compliance with the experimenter's commands to administer shocks?

Benjamin Whorf's linguistic relativity hypothesis proposed that:

Baddeley and Hitch proposed that working memory includes a phonological loop, a visuospatial sketchpad, and a central executive. Which component is primarily responsible for coordinating and directing attention between the other components?

Researchers study identical twins raised apart to investigate the relative contributions of heredity and environment to personality. This research design is best described as a:

George Miller's classic research on short-term memory capacity concluded that people can hold approximately how many chunks of information at one time?

Identical (monozygotic) twins reared apart still show striking similarities in personality, intelligence, and certain mental health conditions. These findings provide evidence supporting:

The hypothalamus plays a major role in regulating which set of behaviors?

Muzafer Sherif's Robber's Cave experiment demonstrated that intergroup conflict could be reduced most effectively by:

What is the KEY difference between an algorithm and a heuristic in problem-solving?

A neurotransmitter that generally inhibits neural firing and is linked to anxiety disorders when levels are low is:

A researcher wants to assess personality using the Big Five (OCEAN) model. A participant scores very high on Neuroticism and very low on Agreeableness. Which behavioral profile is most consistent with these scores?

Research on optimism and health outcomes consistently shows that dispositional optimists have better immune function and recover more quickly from surgery. The biopsychosocial model best explains this finding by noting that:

Action potentials follow the all-or-none principle. A researcher increases the intensity of a stimulus applied to a neuron well above threshold. Compared to a threshold-level stimulus, the action potential will:

During a sleep study, a participant shows high-amplitude, slow delta waves on an EEG recording. This pattern is most characteristic of which sleep stage?

A used-car salesperson lists a vehicle at $25,000,knowingcustomerswillnegotiatedown.Customerswhocounter-offertypicallysettlearound$22,000 — much higher than they would have if no price had been listed. This pattern BEST illustrates:

A fixed-ratio reinforcement schedule delivers a reward after a set number of responses. Compared to a variable-ratio schedule, fixed-ratio schedules produce which pattern of responding?

William James and Walter Cannon debated the sequence of events in emotional experience. James-Lange theory and Cannon-Bard theory differ in that James-Lange argues: