AP Psych Final Review
Individuals who accept personal responsibility for their life experiences may be characterized as having
an internal locus of control
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 the following explains why Jason can hear the phone today?
Signal detection theory
Research findings in the area of interpersonal attraction indicate that individuals are most likely to be attracted to others who are?
Similar to Them in Attitudes and Values
The terms "modeling" and "imitation" are most closely associated with which of the following?
Social Learning Theory
Which of the following are most involved in the action potential of a neuron?
Sodium and potassium
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 disorder?
Somatoform
Which of the following is characterized by a periodic appearance of sleep spindles?
Stage 2 sleep
Which of the following assessment tools is LEAST likely to be used by a psychoanalytically oriented psychologist?
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
The psychological effects of alcohol are powerfully influenced by the user's
expectations
In a normal distribution of test scores, the percentage of scores that fall at or below the mean score is?
50%
For a language test with normally distributed scores, the mean was 70 and the standard deviation was 10. Approximately what percentage of test takes scored 60 and above
84
The human vestibular sense is most closely associated with the
semicircular canals
The practice of solving problems by using a mental shortcut is an example of
the use of a heuristic
Which of the following is considered an explanation of why bystander intervention is less likely to occur if there are a large number of witnesses to a crime?
Diffusion of responsibility
Which of the following is most characteristic of individuals with chronic schizophrenia?
Disordered Thinking
Multiple personality is a type of?
Dissociative Disorder
Which of the following is an example of metacognition?
Knowing the effectiveness of different strategies for learning statistical formulas.
Language acquisition cannot be fully accounted for by associative learning processes for which of the following reasons?
Language use is creative
Bipolar disorders are most effectively treated with a combination of tricyclic antidepressants and?
Lithium Carbonate
Which of the following best characterizes individuals diagnosed as having personality disorders?
They may function reasonably well in society.
Which perspective was used by Raymond Cattell as a basis for his personality measure known as the 16PF test?
Trait
Early behaviorists believed that psychology should NOT focus on the "mind" because the "mind" is
unobservable
I. Prototype matching to organize information into categories II. Maintaining information in memory through repetition III. Differential treatment, usually negative, based on group membership IV. Recognizing an object as distinct from its surroundings V. Learning to respond differently to similar stimuli Which is a definition of discrimination that most directly applies to classical conditioning?
V
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
Solomon Asch's findings on conformity might best be used to explain why
adolescents follow fads in dress and hairstyle
The humanistic perspective in psychology suggests that
all humans are by nature good
A student participates in a month-long sleep study designed to exam free-running circadian rhythms. If all time cues are removed, the student's total sleep-wake cycle is likely to
average about 25 hours
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
Elena is presented with a list of 20 numbers. When asked to recall this list, she remembers more numbers from the beginning than from the end of the list. This phenomenon demonstrates which of the following types of effect?
Primacy
Remembering how to roller skate involves which of the following kinds of memory?
Procedural
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
Which perspective views the human condition as a mixture of unconscious desires and conflicts?
Psychoanalytic
Which of the following forms of therapy most likely involves a confrontational atmosphere between the therapist and the client?
Rational-emotive therapy
A researcher dabs color on a 16-month old child'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?
Recognition of self
The most common form of color blindness is related to deficiencies in the?
Red-Green System
A person with sight in only one eye lacks which of the following visual cues for seeing in depth?
Retinal Disparity
According to Albert Bandura, people who believe that their efforts will be successful and that they are in control of events have a high level of?
Self-Efficeicy
Which of the following terms is used in hunger and weight-control research to denote the concept that each person has a body-fat level that remains fixed and resistant to change?
Set point
Which of the following is typically cited as a characteristic of autistic children?
Severely impaired interpersonal communication.
The technique of strengthening behavior by reinforcing successive approximations is called?
Shaping
Which type of psychologist would be interested primarily in studying whether people behave differently in groups than they do when alone?
Social
Which of the following studies has had the most profound impact on ethical issues in psychological research?
Stanley Milgram's study of obedience.
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 of which of the following?
Stimulus generalization
Which of the following behavior-therapy techniques is typically used to reduce fear of heights?
Systematic Desensitization
Which of the following treatments is most frequently used to eliminate specific phobias?
Systematic desensitization
After several trials during which a dog is given a certain kind of food at the same time that a specific tone is sounded, there is evidence of conditioning if the dog salivates when?
The Tone is Only Presented
The human brain differs from the brains of most other animals by the relative amount of brain mass devoted to which of the following?
The cerebral cortex
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 +0.90
A prototype is best defined as?
The hypothetical "most typical" instance of a category.
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 interprets the bell as a signal the air puff will follow
When rehearsal of incoming information is prevented, which of the following will most likely occur?
There will be no transfer of the information into long-term memory.
In an experiment designed to determine whether watching violent scenes on television increases the frequency of aggressive behavior in children, one group of subjects saw a nonviolent cartoon and another group saw a violent cartoon. In the play period that followed the viewing of cartoons, researchers observed the two groups of children together and counted instances of aggressive behavior. The control group in the experiment is the group that?
Watched the Nonviolent Cartoons
The painful experience associated with termination of the use of an addictive substance is known as?
Withdrawal
A schema can be described as
a mental construct
The minimum intensity at which a stimulus can be detected at least 50 percent of the time is known as the
absolute threshold
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
Material that an individual cannot remember but is on the "tip of the tongue" is
available, but not accessible
Contemporary definitions of abnormality might include all of the following criteria EXCEPT
gender
The overall purpose of psychoanalytic therapy is
help the client in therapy gain new insight into himself or herself
The evolutionary perspective (sociobiology) argues that
humans are genetically programmed to ensure that there is a new generation of the species
Alfred Binet's most important contribution to psychology was in the area of
intelligence testing
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
The two components of Schachter and Singer's theory of emotion are
physiological arousal and cognitive assessment
When Shelly first had cable television service installed, Public Broadcasting (PBS) was on channel 9. Her cable company then switched PBS to channel 16. Shelly now has trouble remembering that PBS is on channel 16 and not on channel 9. This memory problem represents
proactive interference
The basic purpose of the DSM-IV-TR is to
provide a set of diagnostic categories for classifying psychological disorders.
Neurosurgeons cut the corpus callosum in the brain disrupting communication between the right and left hemispheres to
reduce anxiety attacks and phobic reactions
The ability to choose specific stimuli to learn about, while filtering out or ignoring other information, is called
selective attention
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
A 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 teacher taught 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
According to the psychoanalytic view, depression is caused by
unresolved experiences of loss from childhood
A test that fails to predict what it is designed to predict lacks
validity
Hypnosis has been found useful in the treatment of?
Pain
Which component of the limbic system has an essential role in the formation of new memories?
Hippocampus
If the variance of a set of scores is 100, the standard deviation will be
10
A 14-month old toddler is placed in an unfamiliar situation with the 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 distressed when placed back on the floor. Mary Ainsworth would consider this evidence of with of the following?
A resistant or ambivalent attachment style
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 has been most effective in the treatment of schizophrenia?
Drug therapy that blocks neurotransmitter sites.
Painkilling substances produced by the brain are known as?
Endorphins
On a fishing trip, Ed realizes that he has mistakenly packed the sewing box instead of the tackle box. He wants to fish but returns home because he does not have any line or hooks. Ed's failure to realize that sewing thread can be used as fishing line and that a bent needle can be used as a hook is an example of?
Functional Fixedness
The primary effect of the myelin sheath is to?
Increase the velocity of conduction of the action potential alone the axon.
Leadership, job satisfaction, and employee motivation are all studied in which of the following psychological disciplines?
Industrial-Organizational Psychology
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
Persistance repetitive thoughts that cannot be controlled are known as?
Obsessions
The hypothesis that intelligence is in part inherited is best supported by the fact that the IQ correlation for?
Pairs of identical twins is greater than for pairs of fraternal twins.
It is widely known in Jerry's social circle that he is the most stubborn and inflexible member of the group. Yet Jerry complains that all his friends are opinionated and rigid. Jerry's complaints are most clearly a sign of?
Projection
For most people, which of the following is an activity based in the right hemisphere of the brain?
Simple Spatial Reasoning
All of the following are conditions that may lead to conflict within organizations EXCEPT
Superordinate goals
Which of the following reflects the inborn and stable rudiments of personality, such as excitability?
Temperament
Hunger and eating are primarily regulated by which of the following?
The Hypothalamus
The occipital lobes contain?
The Primary Visual Cortex
An individual who sees and feels imaginary spiders crawling on his arms and legs is experiencing
a hallucination
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
Prozac functions as an antidepressant medication because it
blocks the reuptake of the neurotransmitter serotonin
Social facilitation theory focuses on situations in which the presence of others causes an individual's performance to
improve
Keisha was able to roll over at two months, crawl at five months, and walk at ten months. This sequence of development is most likely due to
maturation
According to the fundamental attribution error, when explaining the failures of others we usually underestimate the significance of
situational factors
Two friends attribute their high math scores to their high level of effort and ability in math and low Spanish scores to their teacher' subjective grading and favoritism. In this situation these students are exhibiting
the self-serving bias
According to attribution theory, Pablo is most likely to attribute his high score on a difficult exam to?
His Intelligence
The intensity at which a sound becomes audible for a given individual is known as the individual's?
Absolute Threshold
According to Carl Rogers, the role of the therapist in person-centered psychotherapy is to?
Accept the client unconditionally so that the client's own desire for mental health and positive growth will flourish.
The change in the curvature of the lens that enables the eye to focus on objects at various distances is called?
Accommodation
Which of the following neurotransmitters is most directly associated with Alzheimer's disease?
Acetylcholine (ACh)
Which of the following types of test is designed to measure an individual's knowledge of a subject?
Achievement
Which of the following are the stages in Hans Selye's general adaption syndrome?
Alarm, Resistance, Exhaustion
Which of the following is an example of retrograde amnesia?
Alyse cannot remember any details of what happened right before her car accident
Theories of motivation that assert the existence of biological motives to maintain the body in a steady state are called?
Homeostatic
The psychologists who first developed encounter groups and sensitivity-training groups based their work on which of the following approaches?
Humanistic
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
Which of the following sets of scores has the greatest standard deviation?
2, 7, 9, 22
Which of the following responses was most likely acquired through classical conditioning?
A child's fear of dogs after the child has been bitten by a dog.
Which of the following accurately describes a major change in perspective in the field of developmental psychology over the past twenty-five years?
A shift from an emphasis on childhood and adolescence to an interest in development over the life span.
The defense mechanism of reaction formation is best exemplified in which of the following situations?
A woman who is unaware of her anger toward her friend expresses affection for that friend.
Which of the following structures of the brain has been linked with the regulation of hunger and thirst?
Hypothalamus
In an experiment designed to determine whether watching violent scenes on television increases the frequency of aggressive behavior in children, one group of subjects saw a nonviolent cartoon and another group saw a violent cartoon. In the play period that followed the viewing of cartoons, researchers observed the two groups of children together and counted instances of aggressive behavior. The dependent variable in the experiment is?
Amount of Aggressive Behavior Exhibited by the Children
Which of the following correctly describes the firing of neurons?
An All-Or-None Respond
Activation of the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system results in?
An Increase in Respiratory Rate
A complex pattern of organized, unlearned behavior that is species-specific is called?
An Instinct
Of the following research methods, which can best establish a cause-effect relationship?
An experiment
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 is a characteristic common to all individuals with a narcissistic personality disorder?
An unwarranted sense of self-importance.
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 most useful in understanding an employer's interpretation of an employee's poor performance?
Attribution Theory
Which of the following is the correct sequence of anatomical structures through which an auditory stimulus passes before it is perceived as sound?
Auditory canal, eardrum, ossicles, oval window, cochlea
The most well-adjusted and socially competent children tend to come from homes where parents employ which of the following parenting styles?
Authoritative
If a man who is a heavy smoker is given an electric shock every time he takes a puff on a cigarette, which of the following behavior-modification techniques is being used?
Aversive Conditioning
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
John B. Watson was a pioneer in which of the following perspectives of psychology?
Behaviorism
Which of the following approaches to psychology emphasizes observable responses over inner experiences when accounting for behavior?
Behaviorist
A researcher studies the effects of brain lesions in rats. This research study reflects which of the following perspectives?
Biological
The place in the retina where the optic nerve exists to the brain is called the?
Blind Spot
In Ivan Pavlov's experiments in classical conditioning, the dog's salivation was?
Both an unconditioned and conditioned response.
Behaviorally oriented therapists seek to modify a client's behavior by?
Changing the contingencies of reinforcement for the client.
Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning is best described by which the following?
Children progress from a morality based on punishment and reward to one defined by convention, and ultimately to one defined by abstract ethical principles.
The intelligence quotient (IQ) has traditionally been based on the relationship between an individual's mental age and his or her?
Chronological Age
Rats in an 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
Electroconvulsive theory has been most successful in the treatment of?
Clinical Depression
The tendency of most people to identify a three-sided figure as a triangle, even when one of its sides is incomplete, is the result of perceptual process known as?
Closure
Aaron Beck suggested that negative beliefs cause depression. To help change these negative beliefs, Beck used which of the following therapies?
Cognitive
Which of the following do individuals experience when their behavior is inconsistent with their attitude?
Cognitive dissonance
Which of the following allows the examination of living brain tissue visually without performing surgery?
Computerized Axial Tomography
According to Jean Piaget, what is the earliest stage at which a child is capable of using simple logic to think about objects and events?
Concrete Operational
Which Piagetian stage of cognitive development is characterized by mastery of conservation tasks?
Concrete operations
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 the desk chair, and staring off into space. He arrives for the last test with a sore throat and headache. Which of the following best describes Greg's response to stress?
General adaptation theory
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. This student's behavior illustrates which of the following?
Confirmation bias
The debate over whether development occurs gradually, without discernible shifts, or through a series of distinct stages is termed?
Continuity vs. Discontinuity
Responses extinguish fastest when they are learned through which type of reinforcement schedule?
Continuous
The goal of rational-emotive therapy is to help clients?
Correct self-defeating thoughts about their lives.
Which of the following would be used to measure the relationship between age and reaction time?
Correlation
A researcher asks elementary, junior high, senior high, and college students to define the term "cheating," and analyzes differences in their definitions across age groups. This is an example of which type of study?
Cross-sectional
Which of the following concepts was advanced by social psychologists to help explain why people whoa re part of a crowd sometimes commit aggressive, antisocial acts that they would not commit if they were alone?
Deindividuation
Which of the following explains the behavior of normally law-abiding people who act destructively when they are part of a crowd?
Deindividuation
The release of those with mental disorders from mental hospitals for the purpose of treating them in their home communities is called?
Deinstitutionalization
Because studies of learning show that events occurring closely together in time are easier to associate than those occurring at widely different times, parents should probably avoid which of the following?
Delay of Punishment
When parents refuse to accept several psychologists' diagnosis of a child's mental illness, they are using which of the following defense mechanisms?
Denial
In terms of the effect on the central nervous system, alcohol is most accurately classified as which of the following types of drugs?
Depressant
Eleanor Gibson and her colleagues have used the visual cliff to measure an infant's ability to perceive?
Depth
A person is asked to listen to a series of tones presented in pairs, and asked to say whether the tones in each pair are the same or different in pitch. In this situation the experimenter is most likely measuring the individual's?
Difference Threshold
According to Benjamin Whorf's linguistic relativity hypothesis, which of the following is true?
Different languages predispose those individuals who speak them to think about the world in different ways.
The failure of bystanders to give victims of automobile accidents needed assistance is sometimes explained as an instance of?
Diffusion of Responsibility
A teacher asks students to think of as many uses for a brick as possible. By listing 50 uses, most of which the class finds new and unusual, Susan is displaying?
Divergent Thinking
According to Sigmund Freud, a child's early experience in coping with external demands leads to the development of the?
Ego
Which of the following is associated with schizophrenia?
Enlarged, fluid-filled areas of the brain
The correlations between the IQ scores of identical twins reared apart are lower than those of identical twins reared together. This difference is best explained by which of the following?
Environment plays an important role in determining IQ
A teenager would most probably draw on which of the following to recall her tenth birthday party?
Episodic Memory
The view that human emotions are universal has been supported by studies of?
Facial Expressions
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 member remain at an earlier location." Which concept was Freud describing?
Fixation
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 6 hours after drinking it, whereas with a sweet drink, performance is better 1 hour after drinking it. 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 and time of consumption
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 6 hours after drinking it, whereas with a sweet drink, performance is better 1 hour after drinking it. Which of the following are the independent variables?
Flavor of drink and time of consumption
Sigmund Freud believed that dream analysis was a useful device for?
Gaining Insight into Unconscious Motives
If Carmelita stares at a red spot for one minute and then shifts her gaze to a white piece of paper, she is likely experience an afterimage that is?
Green
I. Prototype matching to organize information into categories II. Maintaining information in memory through repetition III. Differential treatment, usually negative, based on group membership IV. Recognizing an object as distinct from its surroundings V. Learning to respond differently to similar stimuli Which is a definition of discrimination that most directly applies to social psychology?
III
I. Prototype matching to organize information into categories II. Maintaining information in memory through repetition III. Differential treatment, usually negative, based on group membership IV. Recognizing an object as distinct from its surroundings V. Learning to respond differently to similar stimuli Which is a definition of discrimination that most directly applies to perception?
IV
Which of the following is most likely to characterize the behavior of students who have high achievement motivation and are intrinsically motivated to play a musical instrument?
If permitted to choose their own pieces of music, they will select very difficult ones that are beyond their present ability to play
Which of the following was true of Solomon Asch's experiments on conformity?
If the confederates' judgments were not unanimous, the degree of conformity by experimental subjects decreased.
A survey shows that children who have encyclopedias in their homes ear better grades in school than children whose homes lack encyclopedias. The researcher concludes that having encyclopedias at home improve grades. This conclusion is erroneous primarily because the researcher has incorrectly?
Inferred Causation from Correlation
Receptors that are especially important for helping a person maintain balance are located in the?
Inner Ear
Which of the following is NOT a Gestalt principle of perceptual organization?
Intensity
Carla tutors other students because she likes to be helpful, whereas Jane tutors classmates strictly for pay. Their behaviors demonstrate the difference between?
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
Rudolph spends hours painting in his studio even though he sells few pictures. Which of the following explains Rudolph's creative productivity?
Intrinsic motivation
The mean will be higher than the median in any distribution that?
Is Positively Skewed
One criticism of Sigmund Freud's psychosexual theory of development is that it?
Is based on empirically unverifiable constructs.
A somatoform disorder is best described as an illness that?
Is physical in nature and caused by psychological factors.
Which of the following statements is true of behaviorism?
It holds that development is largely a product of learning.
Which of the following is true of the reticular activating system?
It regulates levels of arousal.
According to the ethical guidelines set by the American Psychological Association (APA), which of the following is true of psychological research in which animals are used as subjects?
It should conform to all APA ethical guidelines for animal research?
In which of the following types of research are the same children tested periodically at different points in their development?
Longitudinal
The cognitive theory of depression states that depression results from?
Maladaptive Interpretations of Life Events
In their discussions of the process of development, the advocates of nature in the nature-nurture controversy emphasize which of the following?
Maturation
A word or part of a word that is in itself meaningful, but that cannot be broken into smaller meaningful units, is called a?
Morpheme
Which of the following is considered the fundamental building block of the nervous system?
Neuron
Dopamine, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine are all?
Neurotransmitters that excite or inhibit a neural signal across a synapse.
Distrust of others is symptomatic of?
Paranoia
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 6 hours after drinking it, whereas with a sweet drink, performance is better 1 hour after drinking it. Which of the following is the dependent variable?
Participants' spelling test scores
Which of the following is a genetic disorder that results in a deficiency of a liver enzyme which, if not treated soon after birth, may eventually lead to profound mental retardation?
Phenylketonuria (PKU)
According to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which of the following statements is true?
Physiological needs must be met before an individual achieves self-actualization.
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
In a famous series of experiments conducted by Harry Harlow, infant monkeys were separated from their mothers at birth. The infants were then given two surrogate mothers (a terry-cloth "mother" and a wire "mother"), each of which alternately had a nursing bottle that provided food to the infants. The experimental results showed that in frightening situations the infant monkeys?
Preferred the terry-cloth mother, even when the wire mother had the nursing bottle.
