AP Psychology Unit 5 - AP Classroom Questions

Which of the following represents the percentile rank on the results of a score of 85 on an IQ test?

16%

Which of the following describes the concept of schema?

Marsha thinks the waiter asked her whether she wanted water even though he did not, because she thinks waiters ask patrons whether they want water.

Which of the following activities most directly relies on the hippocampus?

Memorizing the layout of a neighborhood

Ms. Reagan, who is a teacher, agrees more with Howard Gardner's theory of intelligence than Charles Spearman's theory of intelligence. Which of the following scenarios would she most agree with?

Ms. Reagan thinks that her students exhibit more than one type of intelligence. For example, she notices her student Noel plays well with others as well as alone.

A logical, systematic procedure for solving a problem is known as

an algorithm

When confronted with the sequence "_N_" at the end of a word in a crossword puzzle, Tony inserts the letters I and G in the two blanks because that procedure has led to the correct answer in previous puzzles. This example illustrates the use of

an algorithm

Creativity is most closely associated with which of the following?

divergent thinking

Austin can't remember Jack Smith's name because he wasn't paying attention when Jack was formally introduced. Austin's poor memory is best explained in terms of

encoding failure

A teenager was given a new phone as a gift and thought the old phone should be thrown away, not realizing that the old phone could be used as a music player to avoid taking up space on the new phone. This example illustrates

functional fixedness

the Vietnamese language has the sound that goes with the letters "NG" at the beginning of words, including names. Americans have difficulty hearing and speaking that sound. that sound is a kind of...

phoneme

To remember a list of words, Jerry tries walking through his bedroom and making associations between words on the list and various areas he visits in his bedroom. Jerry is trying to improve his memory encoding by using

the method of loci

Maria is a thirteen-year-old congenitally deaf child who was born to hearing parents living in a remote, rural area. Since birth her parents have provided love, nourishment, educationally enriching toys, and developed their own hand signals to communicate with her about basic necessities. However, Maria did not begin to learn sign language until she was twelve and the family moved to a city and encountered members of a deaf community. Maria has found it very difficult to learn sign language, no matter what her instructors try. Which of the follow concepts best explains Maria's difficulty learning sign language?

A sensitive period

Which of the following is most likely to be a false memory?

A young child's memory of a day at the beach

Professor Gustafson is developing a new intelligence test and wants to ensure the test has good inter-rater reliability. Which of the following strategies will most directly help him achieve this goal?

Allowing only trained researchers to grade the test, as they will have a good understanding of the proper way to score certain things and will be more likely to agree

An example of a failure of source monitoring is

Amir telling Jorge the same story Jorge told him earlier in the week, because Amir forgot Jorge already told him the story

Which of the following scenarios best demonstrates the role of context effects in memory?

Amy studied for a vocabulary test in the same classroom and at the same time of day as the normal class, and she performed better on the test than students who studied in different classrooms under different conditions.

Professor Belvedere wants to help her anatomy students memorize the names of different parts of the body. Which of the following techniques will best help her students?

Asking them questions about the meaning of each word

Which of the following statements about automatic processing or effortful processing is true?

Automatic processing requires little mental effort.

Five-year-old Tahani is entering a school where English is the only language spoken, but in her home, her family uses a combination of both English and her family's native language. When she starts school, she takes a test measuring her English language development. Her score is well below that of the other children in her class, most of whom live in homes where only one language is spoken. Which of the following is the most likely explanation for Tahani's test scores?

Because Tahani speaks more than one language, her proficiency in each language may come later than for her monolingual peers.

Which of the following scenarios is an example of retroactive interference?

Carl tries to remember the name of his first boss, but he cannot because he keeps thinking of the name of his current boss.

Dr. Porter is studying the effectiveness of two intervention programs to improve the outcomes of children who have an intellectual disability. Which of the following groups of children should she include in her study?

Children who have an IQ between 50 and 69

A teenager believes very strongly that a particular basketball player should not play on his favorite team. Throughout the season, the teenager focuses on every mistake the player makes. However, he does not notice how well the player passes, helps his teammates, and rebounds. This teenager's behavior illustrates which of the following?

Confirmation bias

Arthur is helping his friend set up her new phone. Arthur has never used this type of phone, but he uses his knowledge of setting up his own phone to help figure out how to use the new phone. According to Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence, Arthur is using which type of intelligence?

Creative intelligence

Maki is a three-month-old living in a household of Japanese speakers. Which of the following best describes how her ability to discriminate phonemes will develop?

Currently, she will likely be able to discriminate the phonemes \l\ and \r\; after she reaches about eight months of age, she will have begun to lose the ability to discriminate these phonemes.

Which statement best describes the research consensus on intelligence scores of males and females?

Differences in overall intelligence are explained by the stereotype threat

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

When Gustavo goes through lists of inventory items and thinks about whether each one is a fruit or not, he remembers more of the items on those lists later than when he goes through lists of inventory items and does not think about what each item is. Which of the following concepts best explains Gustavo's performance?

Elaborative encoding, because engaging in deeper processing improves memory.

Which of the following psychologists is most strongly associated with research on false memories?

Elizabeth Loftus

Dr. Rudolph's class has a big test coming up next week. Which of the following students is using a studying strategy that is most likely to lead to memory consolidation?

Elizabeth studies for a half hour before she goes to bed each night the week before the exam.

Which of the following is an example of the tip-of-the-tongue effect?

Emma is telling her friend what she did over summer vacation when she discovers she cannot think of a specific word that she would like to say. She stops telling the story, because she has the distinct feeling that she is about to be able to think of the word if she waits just a moment.

Which of the following best illustrates Ebbinghaus' 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.

A psychologist has just developed a new test that he hopes will be a good measure of intelligence. At the surface level, the questions appear to be the types of puzzles and problems that would provide an intellectual challenge and give insight into someone's intellectual abilities. Unfortunately, when he distributes the test to a classroom of college students, it does not appear to perform similarly to existing measures of intelligence. The test does not predict student GPAs and in fact is better at predicting performance on a measure of anxiety than intelligence. Which of the following characteristics does the new intelligence test possess?

Face validity, because the test looks like it should measure intelligence.

Marie has just celebrated her ninety-second birthday. She lives on her own and still drives short distances, but she is starting to forget where she leaves her glasses and cannot figure out how to work her new security system. Based on this info only, which of the following may be declining?

Fluid intelligence

Of the following, which is the best example of divergent thinking in problem-solving?

Focusing on ideas within a category of associated solutions

Martine needs a hammer but cannot find one. As she looks around her apartment, her gaze passes over a metal paperweight and some other objects that could potentially serve as a makeshift hammer. However, she is so focused on these objects' typical uses that she does not think to use any of them as a hammer. Martine is experiencing which of the following?

Functional fixedness

Which of the following examples is most consistent with the theory that executive functioning provides the basis for general intelligence?

Geoff is able to easily remember a long list of instructions after hearing them only once and also scores higher than average on intelligence tests.

group 1 is asked to write down the names of the seven deadly sins. group 2 is asked to look at a list of possible names of the sins and circle the correct seven. Why might group 2 be more likely to recall more sins?

Group 2's list provides more retrieval cues, making this recognition task easier for them

Which of the following psychologists is best associated with studying the function of memory?

Hermann Ebbinghaus

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?

Martin has been heavily influenced by the work of Lewis Terman. Which of the following perspectives on intelligence would Martin most likely have?

Intelligence is primarily a biologically based capacity.

Which of the following describes one of the functions of the temporal lobe of the brain?

It is where declarative memories are stored.

Which of the following statements is true of insight problem solving?

It requires an incubation period in which the problem solver can start fresh on the problem.

Which of the following is an example of metacognition?

Knowing the effectiveness of different study strategies for different courses for one's own brain

Rats given a drug that enhances long-term potentiation (LTP) will learn a maze with half the usual number of mistakes. This suggests that

LTP provides a neural basis for learning and remembering associations

Which of the following researchers conducted a longitudinal study on gifted individuals to determine if their lives were more satisfying than others?

Lewis Terman

Keisha performs well in her geometry course in school, and her classmates often ask her for help with understanding word problems and writing formal proofs. Her friends describe her as very rational and analytical. According to Howard Gardner, which type of intelligence is Keisha most likely to possess?

Logical-mathematical

When studying for a vocabulary test, Catherine read one of her vocabulary words and its definition aloud several times. About twenty seconds later, she still remembered the word's meaning, but then she moved on to the next word in the list without engaging in any further strategies to enhance her memory. The next day, she tested herself on the same vocabulary word at the same time, in the same mood, and in the same location as when she had first studied the word, but she could not remember its definition. It is most likely that Catherine could not remember the word because she failed to engage which of the following memory functions?

Long-term memory, because Catherine failed to encode the word; therefore, the word did not become a part of her long-term memory.

A researcher asks two different groups their opinion about how much money the president should earn per year. Group 1 was asked "Should the president make more or less than $200,000" and Group 2 was asked "Should the president make more or less than $2 million". The researcher finds that participants in Group 2 are more likely to suggest that the president should make more than $1 million per year. The researcher is investigating the effects of which of the following?

Proactive interference

An example of divergent thinking is

Reagan brainstorming as many uses of a toothpick as possible in a two-minute period

Which of the following is true of analogies in supporting problem solving?

Relevant analogies usually help people solve problems, but people often do not spontaneously think of relevant analogies.

An example of using elaborative encoding to improve memory is

Sam remembering which tree is the ginkgo by using the phrase "stinko ginkgo" because the fruit of the ginkgo tree smells bad

After visiting her professor's office, Rachel writes down everything she remembers seeing there. She correctly remembers many details, but she falsely remembers seeing books even though there were no books in the office. Additionally, she did not remember seeing a skull that was in the office. Which memory concept best explains why Rachel falsely encoded the books and failed to encode the skull?

Schemas

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

To help himself remember the name of his new colleague, Hope, Jose thinks about the meaning of her name—the feeling of hopefulness. Which of the following concepts best corresponds to Jose's strategy?

Semantic encoding

Rodrigo's three-year-old sister says the phrase "We goed to the store" instead of "We went to the store." According to Noam Chomsky, what is the best explanation for her behavior?

She is overregularizing her use of the past tense.

The work of Alfred Binet challenged which approach to intelligence?

Sir Francis Galton's heritability theory

Which of the following scenarios involves using cued recall?

Steven studies a list of word pairs and is later given the first word of each pair and asked to recall the second word in the pair.

Which of the following illustrates the primacy effect?

Susam left his grocery list at home and can remember only the first two items on the list.

Rachel is taking the ACT for the third time in the hopes of improving her score by five points so that she can attend the school of her choice. When she receives her test result, she finds she has received exactly the same score as the first two times she took the ACT. Which of the following best explains Rachel's score?

Test-retest reliability

If Jess has a type of amnesia that affects the formation of explicit memories but not implicit ones, which of the following will she be most likely to remember?

The arm position to throw the ball

Dr. Sosa administers the first exam to all his introductory psychology students, which amounts to 250 students total. The mean for the first exam was 75%. The grades for Dr. Sosa's classes are distributed as shown below. Dr. Sosa concludes the students in his class are achieving appropriate mastery of the material. Why is this conclusion invalid?

The distribution is positively skewed.

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.

An example of state-dependent memory is

Tommy finding it easier to remember the materials on an exam while taking it because he was sad while studying for the exam

Which of the following best describes the primacy effect?

When people have better recall of things that occur at the beginning of a sequence

Which of the following is credited with creating the formula below to determine IQ?

William Stern

The fact that Lori finds herself thinking about dogs and other pets after seeing a cat is evidence that human memory is organized into

an association network

A mental set is

an established way of thinking about or perceiving something

Average IQ scores have increased steadily over the past 100 years. It has been argued that this effect is most likely due to

an increase in the average number of years in school

While reading a novel at a rate of nearly 500 words per minute, Megan effortlessly understands almost every word. This ability highlights the importance of

automatic processing

Vandana, a 12-month-old infant, is listening to her father talk to her and suddenly repeats a word that he just said. Her father praises her and gives her a cookie. After she gets the cookie, she repeats the word again. Vandana's behavior can be best explained by using the theory of

behaviorism

For a person planning to hold a party outside, an example of the predictable-world bias would be

believing that nice weather is due this year because it rained a lot the last three years

Patrick believes his basketball coach doesn't like him and subsequently focuses on all the times the coach criticizes his playing and ignores all the times the coach praises his performance. Patrick's behavior is best explained by the concept of

confirmation bias

Walking into your bedroom you think, "I need to get my backpack in the kitchen." When you reach the kitchen, you forget what you came there for. As you return to your bedroom, you suddenly remember, "Backpack!" This sudden recall is best explained by

context-dependent memory

Explicit memories are

created in the hippocampus

Students often remember more information from a course that spans an entire semester than from a course that is completed in an intensive three-week learning period. This best illustrates the importance of

distributed practice

Edward has gathered research on 200 sets of identical twins raised apart. Those studies have led him to believe that intelligence is 75% genetics. While he cannot say for a single individual that percentage of intelligence which is attributed to genetics, Edward is trying to identify the _______________ of intelligence.

heritability

Unlike implicit memories, explicit memories are processed by the

hippocampus

Which of the following categories did Sternberg propose contributed to intelligence?

hiugfydgdstrdfg checkk

Consolidation can be described as the process of

long-term memories being formed from short-term memories

A teacher asks Yvonne to go to another classroom to get a student whom Yvonne has never met. As she walks, she repeats the student's name to herself over and over to help her remember. Yvonne is boosting her memory by using

maintenance rehearsal

Short-term memory is best described as

memory that can hold only a small amount of information

The cerebellum is most directly involved in

motor learning

Two-year-old Mica tells her grandmother that the new couch 'costed' too much. The scenario illustrates that children

overgeneralize the use of grammatical rules

Noam Chomsky's view of language proposes that

people have an inherent language acquisition device

When Loftus and Palmer asked observers of a filmed car accident how fast the vehicles were going when they "smashed" into each other, the observers developed memories of the accident that

portrayed the event as more serious than it had actually been

The difference between divided attention and selective attention is that divided attention

requires more automatic processing than selective attention does

Jeanette is curious to see how many numbers she can hold in her mind at once. She asks her friend to test her on lists of random digits to see how many she can remember. Based on what is known about the average limits of short-term memory capacity, what is the most likely number of digits Jeanette will be able to remember?

seven (7)

When Paula takes her AP Psychology exam, the proctor reads from a set of instructions, which all students are told to follow precisely. Her friend taking the same exam at the same time in a different location was given the same instructions. Which of the following is best described in the scenario?

standardization

A researcher wanted to test the psychometric properties of a new intelligence test for children. She administered the test twice, two months apart, to children in a fourth-grade classroom. On the second administration, she noticed that the children who performed well were not the same children who performed well on the first administration and that there appeared to be no relationship between student performance on the first and second administration of the test. Based on this scenario, the psychological construct missing from this intelligence test is

test-retest reliability, because the researcher is administering the same test twice

John went to the beach for vacation shortly after having watched a documentary film about shark attacks. Overestimating the possibility of encountering a shark in the water, he decided to spend the day sunbathing and reading instead of going for a swim. John's reasoning can be explained through

the availability heuristic

Piper reads about someone described as adventurous and extroverted. She then judges that this person is more likely to be a lawyer who enjoys hiking than a lawyer who does not. The best explanation for Piper's error is that she is basing her judgment on

the representativeness heuristic

Which of the following best describes explicit memories?

the result of effortful processing

Sometimes people who speak different languages are in a community together and must develop a way of communicating. Similarly, their offspring must also find a way to communicate. The main difference between the speech of the first generation and the speech of the second generation is

the speech of the second generation tends to have more complex grammar rules

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

Iconic memory is to echoic memory as

visual stimulation is to auditory stimulation

Mary has an IQ score within one standard deviation above the mean score. This indicates her score was

within the middle 68% of people who took the test