2004 AP Psych Test
Don’t go to the next slide until
students have answered the
question.
• 1. the answer is B. Sensory adaptation
explains why we can’t feel our underwear
most of the time.
•
•
•
•
•
2. A. experimental – in a lab
B. cognitive – how we think
C. developmental – how we develop
D. social – how we interact with other people
E. clinical – in a clinic or hospital
• 3. The answer is A. It helps people diagnose
and classify disorders.
DSM-IV-TR
The five axes of the DSM-IV-TR
.
• Axis I Clinical syndromes. (All mental disorders & criteria for
rating them except personality disorders/mental retardation,
also abuse/neglect)
• Axis II Personality disorders, Mental retardation. (Life long
deeply ingrained, inflexible & maladaptive)
• Axis III General medical condition. (Any medical condition that
could effect the patients mental state.)
• Axis IV Psychosocial & environmental problems. (Stressful
events that have occurred within the previous year)
• Axis V global assessment functioning. (How well the patient
performed during the previous year)
• 4. The answer is E. Post = after traumatic =
traumatic. PTSD is common with war veterans
but it also happens with other horrific events.
MAJOR categories of Mental
Disorders
1.Anxiety disorders
2.Mood disorders
3.Somatoform disorders
4.Dissociative disorders
5.Personality disorders
6.Schizophrenia & other psychotic
disorders
• 5. The answer is D. Humanists emphasize free
will, self actualization, finding yourself,
choosing your own path. Humanists – hippies.
Major SCHOOLS of psy…
•
•
•
•
•
•
Psychoanalytical (dynamic) INSIGHT
Behavioral (Conditioning)
Humanistic
Cognitive
Social
Biological
• 6. Remember the moon walking bear???
• The answer is A. selective attention (similar to
the cocktail party effect).
• 7. A. stimulus discrimination is when you know the
difference.
• B. second order conditioning is when you train a dog
to drool to a bell, then the dog associates light with
the bell then drools to
• C. Just like Little Albert, you generalize your
association to similar things.
• 8. A. Longitudinal studies take a long long long
time (like decades). They measure how things
change over time.
• B. ????
• C. cross sectional studies study different
sections of the population (different ages, class
levels, race).
• D. Case studies study something in depth
• E. Observational – observe and take notes
The 3 – A’s of MOTIVATION
Achievement
Affiliation
Aggression
• 9. The answer is C. People who do things for
the love of it are intrinsically motivated.
• Intrinsic – inside your SELF (personal
fulfillment)
• Extrinsic – outside your SELF (to impress or
please others, or for GAIN)
• 10. The answer is D. (seeing a camouflaged
bug)
Stimuli Discrimination
• 11. E. A dog drooling to a bell but not a gong.
Stimuli Generalization
• 12. C (racial)
• This tiger apparently doesn’t discriminate!
13. D When deciding if a behavior is
abnormal, one’s ACTUAL gender is not a
consideration.
That is – everyone is born with certain genitalia, but if society
rigidly (morally) defines gender ROLES, then THAT can lead
to psychological anxiety in those who do not fit those roles,
• 14. Read this one a couple of times. If twins
are reared apart then their environment is
different. Since IQ scores have a lower
correlation when reared apart, then
environment is important. The answer is B.
• 15. A. standardization means it was given the
same way to different people and the answers
form a bell curve.
• B. ??
• C. ??
• D. validity means tests what it is supposed to.
• E. reliability means the results are the same
again and again.
• 16. The answer is A. Electricity will travel to
both sides of the brain but always originate on
one side. So they cut it.
• A: egocentrism is one stage of Jean Piaget’s
theory of
cognitive development, egocentrism is an inability on the part
of a child in the preoperational stage of development to any
point of view other than their own.
• B: Social context: Bandura asked “do people act differently
according to the social situation and why?
• The answer is C. maturation. Biologically, she
is growing up.
• D. Mary Ainsworth developed 3 types of
attachment: Secure, Ambivalent,
Anxious/avoidant.
• E. Assimilation has to do with schemas,
grammar, categorization.
• 18. A. Cognitive = thinking. The psychologist is
trying to change Wade’s behavior, not his
thinking.
• B. Biological – give Wade medicine or surgery
• C. Psychodynamic – probe Wade’s unconscious
mind through dream analysis or transference
• D. Humanistic – help Wade remove barriers to
self actualization or find himself
• E. Behavioral therapy involves reinforcements
and punishments to change a behavior.
• 19. a. RET therapy is a technique that challenges
a person’s irrational thoughts, so it’s very
confrontational!
• C. aversive conditioning- might involve shocking
one’s testicles every time something is done or
thought (classical cond.)
• D. person-centered usually means the client does
most of the talking.
• E. systematic desensitation involves gradually
exposing someone to their source of fear or
anxiety.
• 20. Think optical – occipital
• So rule out C, D, and E since they don’t have it.
• Hearing goes to the temporal lobe (think ears
are near the temple) TEMPO
• The answer is B.
• 21. The answer is c.
•
•
•
•
22. Pick the answer that is closest to 24 hours.
Circa means about dian means day
Circadian rhythms are your day/night cycles.
The answer is A.
• 23. The answer is B. 10
• 24. a. behavior – behavioral therapy
• B. reach full potential – self actualization –
humanistic therapy
• C. alter thought processes – cognitive therapy
• D. the answer
• E. get rid of irrational thoughts – cognitive
(RET)
• 25. The answer is D. If the mean is 70, and the
standard deviation is 10, How many test takers
scored above 60? 60 is 1 standard deviation
below the mean.
• If you are going to guess, will your answer be more or less than 50?
• 26. Salt and bananas!
• The answer is B.
27. What is another word for “relationship”?
• A. correlation
• B. central tendency relates to the way in which
quantitative data tend to cluster around some value:
mean, median, mode
• C. a histogram is a graphical representation showing
a visual impression of the distribution of data.
• D. standard deviation is a measure
of how spread out numbers are.
• E. The t-test assesses whether the
means of two groups are
statistically different from
each other.
• A. The amygdala is mainly in charge of Fight or
Flight
• B. Hippocampus – Hippies started on college
campus. You go to college to remember. The
answer is B.
• C. Pituitary is growth, etc (Endocrine Sys)
• D. Hypothalamus is mainly in charge of body
homeostasis: hunger, sex, temperature, etc.
• E. Thalamus is the relay station.
• 29. B semicircular canals
•
•
•
•
•
30. A. cocaine is a stimulant
B. marijuana is a hallucinogen
C. dopamine is a neurotransmitter
D. alcohol is the answer
E. nicotine is not a depressant
• 31. E. Only an experiment can establish cause
and effect.
• 32. C
33. COGNITIVE (to make associations).
If it had been a behavioral interpretation what would
be the closest right answer?
• A. a “reflex to the bell” what does that mean?
The word should have Conditioned RESPONSE
to be accurate.
• B. huh??
• C. C is the best answer
• Again these are BEHAVIORAL terms
• E. Monkeys are NOT primates – they are NOT
intelligent. Even the lower primates KNOW
nothing about scientific experiments
• 34.The Stanford-Binet test is the actual name
for what we call the IQ test.
• The answer is A.
• 35. A. and E. Rewards are better for
extrinsically motivated musicians
• B. If the musician is achievement motivated,
then the piece can’t be too hard. After all,
they still want to achieve.
• C. If achievement is important, then easy
pieces aren’t likely
• D. Practice is fun for the intrinsically
motivated. The difficulty can’t be too hard for
the achievement motivated. High/intrinsic
achievers choose the task that challenges
them but is not prone to failure.
• 36. diffusion means spread. The answer is C.
Other social psychology terms used in question 36
• Prejudice is different from stereotyping and
discrimination. It is a baseless and usually
negative attitude toward members of a group.
• Stereotyping: to classify others into specific
categories without much room for
individualism or variation.
• Discrimination in BEHAVIORAL psyc is merely
the ability to perceive the difference b/w 2
things
• Discrimination in SOCIAL psyc is the behavior…
• 37. The answer is A. Confirmation bias is
when we only notice things that confirm our
already held beliefs.
Other terms in ? 37
• Availability Heuristic: refers to how easily
something that you've seen or heard can be
accessed in your memory.
• A Representative Heuristic is a cognitive bias in
which an individual categorizes a situation based on
a pattern of previous experiences or beliefs
• The term metacognition refers to the act of thinking
about thinking, or the cognition of cognition.
People in Piaget’s FORMAL OPERATIONAL stage do
this
• Mnemonic devices help you remember: acrostic, etc
38. A schema is a set of expectations, a
mental construct, that we have about
something. 30 people were asked about
this office picture below. Click for results of
survey.
•
•
•
•
29 out of 30
recalled
Chair, desk,
and walls
Only 8
subjects
recalled it
had a skull
9 subjects
recalled it
had books
which it did
not
Memory for
location is
influenced
by the
person’s
schema for
that
location.
• 39. The answer is C. If you catch a virus, then eat at a
Mexican food restaurant, throw up, then you will NOT
want to eat at that restaurant, even if you know that’s
not where you got the virus. That’s the Garcia effect.
Not Jerry or Cheery, although
you could have a Garcia
effect to Cheery Garcia.
• The answer is C. The actual
Term for the Garcia Effect
is Taste Aversion
• 40. C C C C Cones C C C C C Color
• Rods – black and white light.
• The answer is A.
• 41. Which answer deals with excitability and
personality? The answer is D: TEMPERAMENT.
• Imprinting is the social psy term for baby
animals attaching to…. Usually attributed to
Konrad Lorenz.
• Accommodation is having to create a
NEW category (opposite or Assimilation)
42. Her behavior is an example of what?
A. Classical conditioning deals with reflex-like
responses. Like a dog drooling to a bell.
B. She’s not recovering anything
C. No. that’s like Little Albert fearing all white
furry things
D. ??
E. Observational learning (like the Bobo doll
experiment)
• 43. E.
• 44. The answer is B. A client will “project”
their personality onto the therapist.
• 45. E. Behaviorism. Watson was famous for the Little Albert
experiment when he classically conditioned a baby to fear a
white rat (and generalized that fear to all white furry things).
The Two OLD schools of psy
• Structuralism: in psychology, a systematic
movement founded in Germany by Wilhelm
Wundt (1832–1920) and mainly identified
with Edward B. Titchener (1867–1927).
Structuralism sought to analyze the adult
mind (defined as the sum total of experience
from birth to the present) in terms of the
simplest definable components and then to
find the way in which these components fit
together in complex forms.
The second school of …
• Functionalism, attributed to psychologist
William James stressed the importance of
empirical, rational thought over an
experimental, trial-and-error philosophy. The
group was concerned more with the capability
of the mind than with the process of thought.
The movement was thus interested primarily
in the practical applications of research.
• 46. What is the brain made of? What are
nerves made of?
• The answer is B. neuron. Neurons are
chemical AND electrical messengers made up
of dendrites, soma, axon hillocks, axons,
myelin sheaths, terminals, synaptic vesicles
filled with various neurotransmitters that
cross synapses to stimulate receiving dendritic
receptors … RINSE AND REPEAT.
• 47. If you give an 11-year-old non-alcoholic
beer, he’ll start acting drunk because he
expects the alcohol to make him feel that way.
• The answer is A. expectations.
• 48. B. Which answer deals with an individual
conforming to the group? B.
• 49.A. No. That’s behaviorism
• B. Although Abraham Maslow talked about
peak experiences, he said that not all people
have them. No.
• C. based on the ideas of unconditional
positive regard, even mass murderers are
good inside.
• D. Humanists are more positive than that!
• E. Nah, they valued free will more than that.
• 50. Remember, the brain evolved from the
bottom to the top. The bottom of the brain
deals with primitive basic life support. So,
what is at the very top of the brain??
• C. The cerebral cortex, the source of conscious
thought. The outer wrinkly part of the brain
where the lobes are.
• 51. A. Simple failure to encode
• B. reconstruction errors after the event
• C. this is simple damage to the hippocampus
which starts NEW memories.
• D. state – dependent memory
• E. answer
RETRO-GRADE
Before accident
Timeline
After accident
Anterograde-grade
lost memory
Retro-grade
Accident
lost memory
• 52. a. fixation is a freudian term for being stuck
in a psychosexual stage of development
• B. hallucination is when you see or hear things
that are not there.
• C. illusion is a disortion of the senses
• D. An eidetic image is formed if you can still see, at least in
some degree of detail, an "image" of the original stimulus
(picture) after it has been removed. The image will appear to
"linger" on the original surface it was seen, something like an
after-image (except in the original color). A true eidetic image
can literally be "seen" by the subject until it fades. Sometimes
eidetic images can be recalled at will without significant fading.
• E. phobia is an uncontrollable fear of something, not a
hallucination. The individual may have a phobia but s/he is not
“experiencing” it in this question.
• 53. The answer is C.
• There is something called
instinctive drift. One time
psychologists tried to
train raccoons to deposit
coins in a slot. However,
they ALWAYS wanted to
rub 2 coins together and
“wash” them like they
wash food in a stream.
KNOW the term PREPAREDNESS. We are prepared by evolution to fear
snakes more than we are to fear backing into a door knob when naked
• 54. A. Schizophrenia is associated with an
abundance of dopamine, hallucinations and
Enlarged, fluid-filled VENTRICALS in the brain.
• 55. A. neurotransmitter imbalance is the
biological perspective
• B. thoughts – cognitive perspective
• C. bio-psychosocial perspective
• D. psychoanalysis focuses on unconscious,
unresolved conflicts from childhood.
• E. Alcohol abuse is a SYMPTOM of…
•
•
•
•
56. A. hippocampus - memory
B. Hypothalamus (remember the 4 F’s)
C. Thalamus – relay station
D. Pons – facial expressions, basic biological
processes
• E. medulla – heart beat, blood pressure
• 57. A. Fixation – being stuck in a psychosexual
stage. FUNCTIONAL Fixedness is something
very different.
• B. repression – motivated forgetting
• C. regression – acting immature in times of
stress
• D. sublimation – doing something positive with
your “faults”
• E. reaction formation – acting the opposite of
how you truly feel
• 58. C. behavioral (After all, the question is
asking about behaviors)
• Maladaptive behaviors, like overeating, can be
reinforced or learned through observation just
like any other behavior.
• The key term is
“be developed”
which kicks out
Biological.
• 59. B. systematic (gradual) desensitization
• The picture is virtual reality exposure therapy.
• 60. D. Set point
• This is from the motivation chapter. It
theorizes that our body gets comfortable at a
certain weight and is resistant to change.
First, the number of adipose cells (the cells that store fat)
in the body can increase (following a body weight gain),
but can never decrease. These cells are related to the set
point, the long-term weight that the body tends to
maintain. When the adipose cells are not full of stored
fat, the person will be hungry; when they are full of
stored fat, the person will not be hungry. Therefore, a
person's hunger will make it extremely difficult for that
person ever to maintain a weight lower than the person's
highest attained weight. Second, if someone tries to lose
weight by restricting caloric intake, that person's
metabolic rate (the rate at which energy is burned in the
body) will decrease, making it increasingly difficult to
lose weight.
The OTHER hunger terms
• Hypophagia: reduced food intake.
• Hyperphagia: Abnormally increased appetite
for and consumption of food, thought to be
associated with a lesion or injury in the
hypothalamus.
• Glucostats: neurons that measure glucagen
levels.
• Ventromedial Hypothalamus
• Lateral Geniculate Nucleus of
the hypothalamus
• PVN does BOTH
Hormones associated
•
•
•
•
•
Glucagon: Larger amounts decrease
Leptin: Larger amounts decrease
Peptide Y: Larger amounts decrease
Orexin: larger amounts increases
Thyroxin: regulates metabolins
3 of the STRUCTURES DECREASES or INCREASES hunger,
2 of the chemicals DECREASES or INCREASES hunger.
• 61. This prompt deals with Ainsworth’s studies
on attachment styles. She described the
secure attachment, avoidant, and the answer,
C. resistant or ambivalent attachment style
This is the 2nd Attachment
question. Does this say
something about the Test
Development Committee?
• 62. The answer is D. The stimulus causes your
autonomic nervous system to react and you
cognitively assess the stimulus. Is your mom
driving crazy or is she just having fun????
Plotchnik’s 8 basic emotions and levels that are higher or lower
in intensity
• 63. Standard deviation is how far apart are the
numbers away from each other. How much
do they deviate from each other.
• The answer is B.
Let X be a random variable with mean value μ:
Here the operator E denotes the average or expected value of X.
Then the standard deviation of X is the quantity
That is, the standard deviation σ (sigma) is the square root of the
variance of X, i.e., it is the square root of the average value of (X − μ)2.
• 64. Soma = body somataform disorders are
the brain leading to some sensation of the
body. Example: phantom pregnancy.
• The answer is A.
• She is not pregnant, but feels like
she is
• 65. D. Classical conditioning – associative
learning
• When a person or animal creates an
automatic association between 2 things
without reinforcements, that is classical
conditioning (like Pavlov training a dog to
drool to a bell)
Also Learn these terms:
Escape Learning,
Avoidance Learning, and
Learned Helplessness.
• In order to investigate Learned Helplessness, researchers devised an
experiment. In group one, the dogs were strapped into harnesses for a
period of time with a shock and then released, and they ESCAPED the area.
The dogs in the second group were placed in the same harnesses, but were
subjected to electrical shocks that could be avoided by pressing a panel
with their noses. The third group received the same shocks as those in
group two, except that those in this group were not able to control the
duration of the shock. For those dogs in the third group, the shocks seemed
to be completely random and outside of their control.
• Later, the dogs were placed in a shuttlebox. Dogs from the first and second
group quickly learned that jumping the barrier eliminated the shock. Those
from the third group, however, made no attempts to get away from the
shocks. Due to their previous experience, they had developed a cognitive
expectation that nothing they did would prevent or eliminate the shocks.
(Seligman & Maier, 1967).
• 66. D. Early behaviorists were uber-scientists
who took things a bit too far. They said we
should only study observable behavior like a
pigeon pecking on a disk.
• 67. C. Deindividuation (not an individual for
the moment). They riot because they get
swept up by the crowd.
• 68. B. Humanists were the pioneers of group
therapy. It makes sense since they are into
client-centered therapy. In a group, the
therapist doesn’t dominate the conversation.
• 69. A. General adaptation syndrome
More Emotion Theory
• Opponent Process Theory: asserts that
emotions often surface in pairs which oppose
each other; joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain,
fear and relief.
• Two factor theory: Schachter--"people search
the immediate environment for emotionally
relevant cues to label and interpret
unexplained physiological arousal.“ Emotion is
BOTH physiological and cognitive.
And more Scientific Method
• 70. Reliability means you get the same results
again and again, even if the test is crap.
• A. no because it needs to be the same test
• B. that’s predictive validity
• C. needs to be the same people
• D. there needs to be some sort of retake
• E. This is the best answer, even though it’s 2
versions of the same test
• 71. D. Heuristics are mental shortcuts
• Use a heuristic to unscramble this word:
EQEUN
Using a heuristic you might put the q and the u
together.
Using an algorithm, you would try all 1000 letter
combinations until you get it.
• 72. B. the JND deals with noticing the
difference between 2 similar things
• E. absolute threshold is the answer.
11Khz
18
Khz
Visual Cliff experiment
• 73. A. semantic – the meaning of words
• B. episodic – an “episode” of your life (that
time you farted in class)
• C. priming – visual hints prepare the brain to
recall/remember related things faster.
• D. procedural – “procedures” like playing a
piano, walking
• Prospective memory: the
ability to remember to do
something in the future
• 74. The answer is B. Serotonin deals with
sleep, and too much leads to depression.
• 75. When people work in large groups (like in
a tug of war game), the individual does not
work as hard. This is called social loafing. The
answer is C.
Other social psychology terms
• Group polarization: refers to the tendency for
groups to make decisions that are more
extreme than the initial inclination of its
members. These more extreme decisions are
towards greater risk if individual's initial
tendency is to be risky and towards greater
caution if individual's initial tendency is to be
cautious
And other social psych terms
• Social facilitation: the tendency for people to
do better on simple tasks when in the
presence of other people.
• Yerkes Dodson's Law Theory of Social
Facilitation states that “the mere presence of
other people will enhance the performance in
speed and accuracy of well-practiced tasks,
but will degrade the performance of less
familiar tasks.”
• 76. B. Biological – deals with the physical body
(brain, hormones, neurotransmitters)
Remember how you Remember
• 77. The answer is D. You “know” the answer
but just can’t access it for some reason.
• 78. B.Token economy is when you use positive
reinforcement with a large group of people
like elementary schools or classrooms or
mental wards. (Pizza party if everyone gets a
5)
• 79. The answer is C. Think how old does a
child need to be before s/he understands that
water conserves its mass even if it’s poured
into a taller beaker.
• Centration:
focusing all
attention on
ONE event/item
This is the
needed step to
grasp
Conservation
• Find and study your
STAGE DEVELOPMENT
CHART!!!!!!!
• 80. Dissonance = discomfort
• cognitive = thinking
• We experience cognitive dissonance
(discomfort) when our behavior doesn’t
match our attitudes. Which leads to anxiety
The answer is B.
• 81. For the evolutionary perspective, always
look for words and phrases like “adaptive”
“survival of the fittest”, “genetics”, “evolution”
“Darwin”, “Dawkins”, Identical twin studies”.
• The answer is B.
• 82. D. Signal detection theory says we are
more likely to hear something if we expect to
hear something.
• 83. The answer is D. Intensity
• 84. Just think, which one comes first?
Especially, which comes last???
• The answer is E.
• 85. Cognitive therapy is about changing
maladaptive thoughts. He would challenge
irrational thoughts that would stress or
depress the clients. (He’s where Dr. Phil got a
lot of inspiration.)
• 86. a. Decay is a gradual forgetting over a long
period of time
• B. amnesia is brought on by some sort of trauma
• C. no reconstruction error in remembering the
number 9
• PORN
• Proactive-Old info gets in the way of new
• Retroactive-New info gets in the way of old
• The answer is D because channel 16 is making her
forget channel 9.
Think DIRECTION
Old Girlfriend: Jane
Betty my New Girlfriend
who I called Jane
My NEWEST girlfriend: What was the other girls name???
• 87. E.The self serving bias is when we attribute
our successes to internal (dispositional) causes
such as our hard work and intelligence. . .
While we attribute our failures to external
causes (the teacher was a jerk; the test was
too hard).
• 88. Just rule out all the BAD things.
• The answer is E.
• 89. First, antisocial does NOT mean
introverted. It means one does not have a
conscience (like a serial killer).
• The answer is D.
• E. that’s narcissism (I am NOT narcissistic
because I ACTUALLY is better than everyone
else).
• 90. Psychoanalysts use projective personality
tests, meaning they seek to access your
unconscious mind by how you interpret
pictures or fill in blanks.
• The MMPI is a self-report test, even more
respected than the Myers-Briggs.
• The answer is B.
Yell out what you see and I will
diagnose your issue
Yell out what you see and I will
diagnose your issue
Yell out what you see and I will
diagnose your issue
91. The answer is D.
Acetylcholine
• Its function is motor movement
and maybe memory.
To much and you will….
Not enough and you will….
Lack of ACH has been linked to
Alzheimer’s disease.
• 92. The psychoanalytic perspective focuses on
unconscious desires and conflicts.
• The answer is C.
• 93. Self report tests (like the MMPI and the
Myers-Briggs and the Big Five) are trait tests.
The trait approach to psychology says our
personality is based on the sum of our traits
(such as introversion, openness)
• The answer is B.
• 94. When we commit the FAE, we
overestimate dispositional (internal) factors
and we underestimate situational factors.
• The answer is A.
• 95. I feel Starbucky today. Language is
creative. If we had a language acquisition
device, then we couldn’t be so creative.
• The answer is A.
• 96. What are we doing to the subjects to
study this? The answer is C
• 97. What are we measuring? The answer is B.
• 98. C. (same as 96.) (the independent
variables)
99. Stage 2 has sleep spindles. (A)
But what WAVES are associated?
• 100. C. Social – people facil – easy
• Sometimes, athletes and musicians play better
on game day in front of people than at
practice.
• (The Yerkes-Dodson law supports this as well!)