AP Psych Unit 2 MCQs

Kaori is traveling on an airplane for the first time. As the plane takes off, she watches the automobiles driving on the freeway below. Even though the automobiles seem to get smaller as the airplane gains altitude, Kaori does not perceive the cars as shrinking but still perceives them to be their normal size. Which perceptual principle best describes this phenomenon?

Constancy

Ms. Ritter is a high school math teacher. She believes that some people are born good at math and others are not. At the beginning of the new school term, she was informed that her incoming class had poor performance on prior standardized tests. Which of the following is a likely outcome for Ms. Ritter and the upcoming school year?

Ms. Ritter will likely see her students' poor test results during the school year as confirmation of her beliefs that math abilities are fixed.

Which of the following types of validity is established by demonstrating that there is a correlation between scores on a test and later academic performance?

Predictive

- Cognitive psychologist Dr. Leary designed a study to investigate perception. They asked the participants in Group 1 to read a story about a rabbit and a turtle. Participants in Group 2 did not read the story. Next, participants looked at a series of ambiguous drawings and identified what they saw. Their observations were recorded and categorized. The results are depicted in the graph. Which of the following concepts best applies to the results of Group 1? (Group 1 more animals)

Priming

Throughout January and the beginning of February, the first two months of a calendar year, Allison writes the previous year as the date on all her assignments instead of the current year. Allison's tendency to write the wrong year on her assignments is most likely due to which of the following?

Proactive interference

A man sustains a head injury. After the injury, he is able to tie his shoes, but he does not recall where he lives. Which aspect of the man's memory is intact and which aspect is dysfunctional, respectively?

Procedural and semantic

While he is at soccer practice, Erwin reminds himself that he has to stop at the grocery store on the way home to pick up milk and cereal for tomorrow's breakfast. What sort of memory is Erwin using?

Prospective

A test author most interested in ensuring that individuals receive similar scores on a personality test every time they take it is attempting to increase which of the following?

Reliability

- Professor Jovan randomly assigns each student in her psychology class to one of three groups. Group X is required to post a journal entry each week in which they discuss some aspect of psychology in daily life. Group Y is required to take an online quiz about the material each week. Group Z was not instructed to do any additional activities. At the end of the class, Professor Jovan compares the final comprehensive exam scores for Groups X, Y, and Z. The results are shown in the figure. Which of the following psychological principles are best supported by the data in the figure?

Repeated testing can improve learning and memory.

- The graph depicts the stages of sleep, including REM and NREM (Stages 1, 2, and 3). For the person with the results shown in the graph, progressing across the x-axis, there is most likely to be an increase in which of the following? (stages of sleep as hours goes on)

dreaming

For his first AP Psychology test, Jose focused on memorizing the definitions of terms, but he did not do so well. For his second AP Psychology test, he focused more on the meaning of the terms, and he got a better grade. Which of the following describes Jose's more successful approach to learning in AP Psychology?

elaborative rehearsal

Dr. Marcus studies the effects of environmental factors such as diet, drugs, ultraviolet radiation from the sun, and stress on genetic expression (without DNA change). Which of the following best describes Dr. Marcus' field of study?

epigenetics

While attending a concert, Anthony finds that he can clearly recognize the melody coming from the lead violin above all the other instruments playing in the orchestra, even though the other instruments may be louder. Gestalt psychologists would explain Anthony's ability using the principle of

figure-ground

Dr. Roberts conducts a study in which one group of participants counts the number of syllables in each member of a list of twenty words, and the second group creates stories from the same set of words. When later asked to write down as many of the previously seen words as possible, the second group of participants recalls more words than the first group. This study shows the importance of

semantic encoding

LeBron is a high school student measuring 6'9" tall. Everyone tells him that he should try out for the basketball team because all tall people are good at basketball. LeBron goes to the tryouts and tells himself, "I'm going to get on the team because all tall people are good at basketball!" What is this an example of?

stereotype lift

An evolutionary psychologist would explain that humans desire social interaction, social acceptance, and social affiliation due to a need for which of the following?

survival

Tom believes he performed poorly on his last three history exams because of bad luck. As a result, he believes he is due for a good score on the next exam and does not study because he is sure he will perform well. The error in his thinking is most likely attributable to

the gambler's fallacy

Initially, intelligence quotients were calculated on the basis of a person's mental and chronological ages. Using that approach, a person with a mental age of 12 and an intelligence score of 120 would have a chronological age of

10

-A psychologist administered the most recent edition of the Stanford-Binet IQ test to 50 students and their scores are shown in the chart above. How many students earned scores higher than two standard deviations above the mean?

2

Which of the following psychometric properties is used to assess the extent to which the items on an intelligence test measure a person's intelligence?

Construct validity

Professor Whitmore conducted research to examine changes in cognitive development across the life span. He recruited 400 participants and then grouped them by age. The study included 20-year-olds, 40-year-olds, 60-year-olds, and 80-year-olds (100 in each group). Each group in the study took several different tests. Some of the tests were fact-based and drew upon knowledge from several different areas. Other tests required participants to solve new problems as quickly as they could. Dr. Whitmore's research design is best classified as which of the following?

Cross-sectional

Which of the following types of intelligence would be most important in answering trivia questions?

Crystallized

- Carrison views a movie in her home. In the figure, what letter corresponds to the light-sensitive surface of the eye that contains photoreceptors that receive the images of the movie?

D

After Doug witnessed two cars involved in a car accident, a police officer asked Doug how fast the cars were going when the accident happened. According to research by Elizabeth Loftus, which of the following questions could the officer ask that would make Doug most susceptible to the misinformation effect?

How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?

Intelligence tests have been used throughout history to purposefully discriminate against groups of people. Claims that minority groups have lower IQ scores because of genetic factors fail to consider which of the following?

IQ test scores are dependent on social factors such as educational opportunity and poverty.

Which of the following is an example of metacognition?

Knowing the effectiveness of different strategies for learning statistical formulas

Which of the following is classified as an antagonist?

Naloxone, because it counters the effects of an opioid overdose.

Professor Whitmore conducted research to examine changes in cognitive development across the life span. He recruited 400 participants and then grouped them by age. The study included 20-year-olds, 40-year-olds, 60-year-olds, and 80-year-olds (100 in each group). Each group in the study took several different tests. Some of the tests were fact-based and drew upon knowledge from several different areas. Other tests required participants to solve new problems as quickly as they could.

The 20-year-old cohort will likely outperform all other groups on the tests that involve solving new problems quickly.

The data shown in the above graph depict which of the following? (*intelligence scores increasing)

The Flynn effect

When Joe arrives at the library, he can choose from any of several strategies that might help him find the book he needs. He could examine all the books on every shelf, and be certain that he would eventually find the book he wants, but this strategy would take too long. Joe decides instead to ask a librarian to direct him to the appropriate section of the library. Joe is using

a heuristic

The concept of g is most accurately defined as which of the following?

a single, underlying intellectual capacity measured by intelligence tests

A test that is labeled an achievement test is most likely to be given to

allow a student to be exempted from a college course

A test that measures a student's potential ability is

an aptitude test

Which of the following is NOT an example of psychometrics?

grit

Alice is shopping with her daughter when she hears the word "mom." Alice answers, only to realize that the sales clerk said "ma'am" to a customer. This inaccurate perception can be attributed to

perceptual set

The earliest efforts to measure intelligence were directed at which of the following?*

predicting children's success in school

The correlation between scores obtained on two halves of a single test yields information about the test's

reliability

A researcher interested in finding a simple way to estimate intelligence decides to evaluate skull circumference as a possible indicator of intelligence. He finds that the size of an adult's skull remains the same from one measurement to the next, but he finds that skull circumference is not a very good predictor of intelligence. In this example, skull circumference as a measure of intelligence is

reliable but not valid

An individual's ability to focus on a particular conversation in a noisy and crowded room is called

selective attention

A prototype is best defined as

the hypothetical "most typical" instance of a category

Uma is able to remember a list of items she must buy by creating visual images of the items in various spots in her dorm room. The technique Uma is using is called

the method of loci

Maeve wants to change her college major but has decided not to because she is close to finishing. She believes that the time she has spent in her current program will be wasted if she changes now. Maeve is experiencing

the sunk-cost fallacy

Research on stereotype threat indicates that students might not do as well as they can on a test if

they are informed that people of their ethnicity, age, or gender usually do not perform well on the tests

Barclay is excited about all they will learn in AP Psychology when school starts next week. According to the information-processing model of memory, the first stage in memory processing involves which of the following?

Encoding

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.

Devi spent time developing a set of note cards for an upcoming test that used word associations based on what the words meant in relation to each other. Which of the following did Devi use with this study method?

Effortful processing

Francesca is on her way to open a new boutique shop featuring Golden Girls apparel. While on the bus, it seems to her that the trees and buildings outside her window are also moving. Which perceptual principle best explains this?

Apparent motion

A one-year-old child learns that the furry animals with bushy tails she sees outside her window are squirrels. Later she sees chipmunks outside the window and believes those are also squirrels. Which Piagetian concept is the child demonstrating ("Piagetian" refers to Jean Piaget who was a Swiss psychologist known for his work on child development)?

Assimilation

- Which part of the ear is affected by sensorineural deafness?

B

Which of the following theories of intelligence serves as a bridge between Spearman and Gardner recognizing that intelligence compromises many abilities but that these specific abilities exist under a broader umbrella of general intelligence?

Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) Intelligence Theory

- In a study on visual perception, participants were presented with the figure depicted and asked to describe what they saw. Of the 100 participants in the study, 97 saw a cube. Which of the following Gestalt principles best describes the phenomenon that has impacted these results?

Closure

Observers watch a group of people passing a basketball back and forth. A researcher asks the observers to count the number of passes made. As they count passes, many of the observers fail to notice a person in a gorilla costume walking through the basketball court. Which of the following is the most likely reason many of the observers do not notice the person in the gorilla costume?

Inattentional blindness

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

Ana is instructed by her doctor to wear a patch over one eye while an infection heals. While wearing the patch, Ana will lose her ability to use which of the following depth perception cues?

Retinal disparity

David was studying some important historical dates for a test. He noticed that the day and month of one of the dates was the same as his own birthday, and he tried to use that fact to help him remember the date for his test. What is David using to enhance his memory?

Self-reference

On an intelligence test, the number of questions an individual answers correctly is meaningless without which of the following?

Standardization

A devoted young father reads a news report that claims many people believe men are not as intelligent in how to properly care for their children. The young father has plans to care for his child that day.

The father will experience increased anxiety and make mistakes as a caretaker.

Which of the following scenarios is best explained by long-term potentiation?

The first time Colleen tries to remember Leo's name it takes her a long time, but over time she remembers it more quickly.

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

Which of the following is always true of standardized tests?

They are supposed to be administered and scored in a consistent manner.

Which of the following is the best example of fluid intelligence?

Using cubes to figure out the solution to a previously unseen puzzle

When Amy was seven years of age, she had a babysitter from France. During this time Amy learned to speak a little French. Years later, when Amy got to college, she signed up for a beginning French class. Amy learned the material in her French class much more quickly than her classmates did. Amy's rapid learning was most likely due to

implicit memory

When a list of words is learned in order, the words most likely to be forgotten are those that represent which of the following?

in the middle of the list

Geraldine accidentally touched a hot stove. Which part of her nervous system commanded her hand to reflexively pull away?

interneurons in her spinal cord

A basic assumption underlying short-term memory is that it is

limited in capacity

Celeste began studying for a test weeks in advance. She regularly quizzed herself on the meaning of the terms, practicing recall rather than simply rereading her notes or memorizing definitions. She attached personal examples to the terms to help her remember them. Which of the following did Celeste NOT do?

massed practice