AP PSYCHOLOGY REVIEW QUESTIONS

PROLOGUE & HISTORY (2-4%)

1. What is the definition of psychology?

2. What is structuralism?
3. Who found structuralism?
4. What is functionalism?
5. Who founded the school of functionalism?
6. Who wrote the textbook Principles of Psychology?
7. Who was Stanley G. Hall?
8. What is natural selection? Which perspective of psychology is it associated with?
9. Name one psychologist who is considered a behaviorist?
10. What school of thought deals with only behaviors that can be observed?
11. Who is the father of psychology and what was his first experiment about?
12. Which type of professional can prescribe medication?
13. Give an example of an applied psychologist.
14. Give an example of a basic research psychologist.
15. Which two psychologists are associated with the humanistic perspective?
16. Which is the most common type of psychologist?

CHAPTER 1: RESEARCH METHODS (6-8%)

1. What is a case study?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a case study?
3. Which variable is measured? Which variable is manipulated in an experiment?
4. What is the graph called that depicts a correlation?
5. What is the range of a correlation? What indicates a positive correlation?
6. What is the advantage to an experiment?
7. A survey requires random _________, where an experiment requires random _________.
8. Collecting data while watching children playing in a schoolyard is called ________.
9. Which measure of central tendency is best used when outliers are present?
10. What are the four main ethics psychologists abide by in research?
11. What is a problem with correlation research?
12. What statistic is used in calculating correlation data?
13. What is a positively skew graph? Negatively skewed graph?
14. What does the standard deviation measure?
15. What is the different between false consensus effect and hindsight bias?
16. Why do psychologists use double blind studies?
17. What is the difference between a cross-sectional and longitudinal study? What are the
disadvantages of both?
18. Why might a person get better after receiving a false treatment that they think is real?
19. Why do we have operational definitions in experiments?
20. What two groups are needed for experimental conditions to take place?
21. What are the advantages of a survey? What are the disadvantages?

CHAPTER 2/3: BIOLOGY & BEHAVIOR GENETICS (8-10%)

1. What is a neuron?
2. What are the three different types of neurons? (motor, interneuron, sensory)
3. What is a dendrite?
4. What is an axon?
5. What is Action Potential?
6. What is the synapse?
7. What is the lock and key model?
8. What is the difference between an agonist and antagonist?
9. Which neurotransmitter works specifically with muscle movements?
10. Which neurotransmitter controls mood?

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11. Which neurotransmitter controls pain?

12. What is the myelin sheath? What does it do? What happens if it degenerates?
13. What are the four lobes of the brain? What does each do?
14. What is the slow chemical messenger called that is carried through the body by the endocrine
system?
15. Which part of the brain is the message relay center for the senses?
16. Which sense does not pass through the thalamus?
17. The motor cortex is located in ______ lobe, where as the sensory cortex is located in _____ lobe.
18. Which fibers send messages from the brainstem to the brain?
19. Which fibers send messages from one hemisphere to the other?
20. What are the functions of the right hemisphere? The left hemisphere?
21. Who conducted the split-brain experiments?
22. What are the four devices used to look at the brain? Explain each.
23. What does the cerebellum do?
24. Where is Broca’s area of the brain? Wernieke’s? What does each do?
25. What is aphasia?
26. What does the term lesion mean?
27. Which two chemicals help the neuron reach its action potential?
28. How does a neuron work?
29. What are the subcategories of the CNS? PNS?
30. What do the different parts of the brain do?
31. What is the major debate in psychology?
32. Which gender has an X chromosome? A Y chromosome?
33. What is behavior genetics?
34. What is a norm?
35. What is the difference between a collective culture and individualist culture?
36. What is a gender role?
37. What is the difference between gender identity and sex?
38. What is social learning theory?

CHAPTER 4: DEVELOPMENT (7-9%)

1. What major reflexes occur in development?

2. What are the stages (in order) of development when the baby is in the womb?
3. What is the difference between accommodation and assimilation? What is a schema?
4. What are Piaget’s four stages of development in order?
5. What is object permanence? When does it occur?
6. What is conservation? When does it occur?
7. What happens during formal operations?
8. Who was Lev Vigotsky? What was his theory of development?
9. Who was Harry Harlow?
10. What were the results of Harlow’s experiment?
11. What is critical period? How is it similar to imprinting?
12. Who is famous for studying attachment?
13. What are the three types of attachment?
14. Who studied moral development? What were the three stages of moral development?
15. Explain the differences between pre conventional, conventional and post conventional reasoning?
16. Who studied identity development?
17. Explain the difference between identify Achievement, Moratorium, Foreclosure and Diffusion.
18. What is empty nest syndrome?
19. How does Alzheimer’s disease develop?
20. What is the order of Kuebler Ross’ stages of dying?
21. What are Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development? Explain each.
22. Who came up with the theory of crystallized vs. fluid intelligence? Explain the theory.
23. What is theory of mind?
24. Give examples of primary and secondary sex characteristics.

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25. What is stranger anxiety? When does it develop?

CHAPTER 5/6: SENSATION & PERCEPTION (7-9%)
1. What is the difference between sensation and perception?
2. Explain bottom-up processing and top-down processing
3. Give an example of an absolute threshold. A difference threshold.
4. What is Weber’s law?
5. What does signal detection theory state?
6. What is sensory adaptation? Give an example.
7. What is meant by the word transduction?
8. Describe wavelength, hue and intensity of colors.
9. What are the different parts of the eye and what do they do?
10. What is the difference between near-sightedness and far-sightedness? How does the image show
up on the retina?
11. What are rods and cones? Where are cones mostly located?
12. What is meant by parallel processing?
13. Explain the Young-Helmholtz theory? What is another name for this theory?
14. What is the opponent-process theory? Which colors are opposites in the eye? (y-b, r-g, b-w)
15. How does pitch and loudness relate to hearing?
16. Which type of deafness is most common?
17. What is the difference between place theory and frequency theory?
18. How does a cochlear implant work?
19. What is gate theory?
20. What are the most sensitive areas of the body?
21. What are the different taste receptors?
22. What is vestibular sense?
23. What is selective attention? What experiment was conducted with selective attention?
24. What does gestalt mean?
25. What were the results of the visual cliff experiment?
26. What is the phi phenomenon?
27. What is the motion parallax?
28. What is the difference between monocular cues and binocular cues?
29. What is figure-ground perception?
30. What is perceptual constancy?
31. What is perceptual set?

CHAPTER 7: CONSCIOUSNESS (2-4%)

1. What are the three levels of consciousness? Describe each.

2. What are circadian rhythms? How long is our true daily rhythm?
3. Which stage of sleep do night terror occurs?
4. Which stage of sleep does sleepwalking occur? Why do we sleep walk?
5. What happens during REM sleep?
6. What is REM rebound?
7. How many stages of sleep are there? What are the waves called during the different stages?
8. What instrument measures sleep waves?
9. What is most significant about stage two sleep according to the EEG?
10. What is manifest content?
11. What is latent content?
12. Which sleep disorder causes us to stop breathing?
13. What is narcolepsy?
14. What is insomnia? How should it be treated?
15. How is hypnosis explained?
16. Who created hypnosis through what he called animal magnetism?
17. What is the difference between dualism and monism?
18. What do stimulants do to the body? Give an example.
19. What do depressants do to the body? Give an example.

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20. What is marijuana classified as? What is the active ingredient in marijuana?

CHAPTER 8: LEARNING (7-9%)

1. What is a relatively permanent change in behavior called?

2. Which two psychologists are associated with classical conditioning?
3. What are the main components to Pavlov’s experiment?
4. Who is associated with operant conditioning?
5. Who developed the law of effect? What is the law of effect? (favorable responses)
6. What is a skinner box?
7. What is another name for successive approximations?
8. What is the purpose of reinforcement?
9. What is the purpose of punishment?
10. What is an example of positive reinforcement? Negative reinforcement?
11. What is an example of positive punishment? Negative punishment?
12. When should punishment be administered?
13. What are the different types of reinforcement schedules? Give an example of each.
14. Who is associative with observational learning?
15. Describe the Bobo Doll experiment.
16. Where are mirror neurons located?

CHAPTER 9/10: MEMORY, THINKING & LANGUAGE (8-10%)

1. What part of the brain is essential for memory formation?

2. What are the three stages of memory according to the informational processing theory?
3. What is a flashbulb memory?
4. What is explicit memory?
5. What is implicit memory?
6. What is iconic memory? Echoic memory?
7. What are the three kinds of memory?
8. How long does short term memory last?
9. How many items can be stored in short term?
10. What is chunking?
11. What is the difference between effortful processing and automatic processing?
12. How long does sensory memory last?
13. What is a mnemonic device? Peg-word system? Method of loci?
14. What is long-term potentiation (LTP)?
15. Why do we forget information?
16. Which area of the brain stores procedural memories?
17. What is the difference between proactive and retroactive interference?
18. What are the three different kinds of amnesia?
19. What does research tell us about relearning, recall and recognition?
20. What is mood-congruent memory? Context-dependent memory?
21. What part of the brain is directly related to memory?
22. What part of the brain controls muscle movement?
23. Who is considered the father of memory research?
24. What is serial position effect? What is primacy effect? What is recency effect?
25. What is a prototype? Concept?
26. How does conformation bias work?
27. What is insight? Explain how Kolher’s experiment showed insight in action?
28. What is the incubation effect?
29. What is functional fixedness?
30. What is the difference between an algorithm and heuristic?
31. What are the different types of heuristics? Describe each.
32. Who is associated with the Language Acquisition Device?
33. What did Skinner believe about language development?

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34. What is a phoneme? Morpheme?

35. What are the rules of grammar?
36. What are the stages of language development?
37. Why do chimps not have language?

CHAPTER 11: INTELLIGENCE & TESTING (5-7%)

1. What is intelligence?
2. Which theorist of intelligence focused on factor g and factor s?
3. What are the components of Gardner’s theory of intelligence?
4. What are the components of Sternberg’s theory of intelligence?
5. Who promoted the use of emotional intelligence?
6. What was the original formula for IQ scores?
7. Who is associated with the creation of intelligence testing?
8. Who created intelligence tests in the United States at Stanford?
9. What intelligence test is currently used?
10. What are the subscales for the Wechsler IQ test?
11. How is factor analysis used in testing?
12. What is the difference between an achievement test and aptitude test?
13. Describe the bell curve in detail.
14. What is predictive validity? Content validity? Criterion validity?
15. What is reliability? What is test-retest reliability? Split/half reliability?
16. What is standardization?
17. What are the arguments for IQ scores being biased?
18. What is savant syndrome? Give an example.
19. What are the characteristics of mental retardation?
20. What are the differences between men and women with regard to mental abilities?

CHAPTER 12/13/14: MOTIVATION, EMOTION & STRESS (7-9%)

1. What is motivation?
2. What four theories seek to explain motivation?
3. What is drive reduction theory? Give an example.
4. What is set point theory?
5. What is homeostasis?
6. What is the difference between bulimia and anorexia?
7. Who came up with the hierarchy of needs?
8. What are the criticisms to the hierarchy of needs theory?
9. List the hierarchy of needs in order from bottom to top
10. How does the hypothalamus influence hunger?
11. What hormones are involved in hunger?
12. Who came up with the sexual response cycle?
13. Explain the sexual response cycle.
14. What is industrial-organizational psychology?
15. What is the difference between task leadership and social leadership?
16. What is the James Lange theory of emotion?
17. What is the cannon-bard theory of emotion?
18. What is another name for the cognitive appraisal theory of emotion?
19. How does a polygraph work?
20. What is the catharsis theory? What are the criticisms of the catharsis theory?
21. Sally agrees to go on a date with John. On his way home, John stops to help an old woman cross
the street. John’s behavior can most likely be explained by the ______.
22. What is relative deprivation?
23. What is the adaptation-level phenomenon?
24. Which emotion is most clearly identified through facial expressions?
25. Who did numerous experiments using facial expressions? What was Ekman’s main finding?

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26. Which facial expression is most quickly identified in all cultures?

27. What part of the brain recognizes fear?
28. What is stress?
29. Who created GAS?
30. What does GAS stand for?
31. What are the three phases of GAS?
32. What hormones are affected by stress?
33. What are the differences between a Type A and Type B person?
34. What system are lymphocytes parts of?
35. What is health psychology?

CHAPTER 15: PERSONALITY (6-8%)

1. What is personality?
2. Who created psychoanalytic theory?
3. Which psychologists are associated with psychoanalytic theory?
4. What is the Oedipus complex?
5. What is free association?
6. What are Freud’s psychosexual stages in order? Describe each stage.
7. What is another name for getting stuck in a psychosexual stage?
8. How do defense mechanism work?
9. Explain several defense mechanisms?
10. What are projective tests?
11. What are the big five personality traits?
12. What is self-serving bias?
13. What is self-esteem?
14. What is the social-cognitive view of personality?
15. Who is associated with the social cognitive view of personality?

CHAPTER 16: ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY (7-9%)

1. What is the “common cold” of abnormal psychology?

2. What axis of the DSM do general medical conditions such as diabetes fall on?
3. Which disorder is described as having maniac and depressive episodes?
4. What are five types of schizophrenia?
5. What disorder is comorbid with Agoraphobia (fear of inescapable situations)?
6. What type of disorder is conversion disorder?
7. What reference is used to identify disorders among clients?
8. Which disorder is theorized to develop because the mother contracts the flu during gestation?
9. Which valid and reliable test is used to determine if a person is suffering from Axis I disorders?
10. Which disorder is characterized mostly by flashbacks, insomnia and anxiety?
11. What are the three types of dissociative disorders? Describe each.
12. Which neurotransmitter is a main factor is schizophrenia?
13. What Axis are Personality disorders classified on?
14. Which personality disorder is described as being highly manipulative and feeling no remorse?
15. What term seeks to explain psychological disorders as sicknesses?
16. What did Rosenhan’s study caution the psychology community against?
17. What are the five types of anxiety disorders? Describe Each.
18. What is the difference between an obsession and a compulsion?
19. What is the difference between a hallucination and a delusion?
20. Which two neurotransmitters are associated with depression?

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CHAPTER 17: MODES OF THERAPY (5-7%)

1. Which mode of therapy seeks help human growth potential?

2. What are the drawbacks to psychoanalysis?
3. What type of specific therapy is used when a token economy is present?
4. Why are the TAT and Rorschach rarely used in today’s therapy methods?
5. Which mode of therapy seeks to approach a client using multiple forms of therapy?
6. Who is associated with active listening and client-centered therapy?
7. What is it called in psychotherapy where people experience strong feelings toward their analyst?
8. What are five types of behavioral therapies related to classical conditioning?
9. What type of therapy seeks to challenge & change negative and disparaging thoughts?
10. What is it called when we statistically combine results from many different studies?
11. What disorder is light exposure therapy used to treat?
12. What biomedical therapy has been used as a last resort to treat severe depression?
13. What is the name of the classification of drugs used to treat depression?
14. What is the name of the salt-based drug used to treat bipolar disorder?
15. What do benzodiazepines (like Xanax) treat?
16. What psychosurgery method is used to treat emotional violent clients and schizophrenics?
17. What are the side effects of ECT?
18. What is tardive dyskinesia?
19. Which specific receptor sites to modern antipsychotic drugs like Clozapine target?
20. What is considered the short version of Psychoanalytic therapy that is focused on treating
symptoms?

CHAPTER 18: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (7-9%)

1. What is fundamental attribution error?

2. What are belief-based feelings that predispose how we react to people, objects or events?
3. How can attitudes be affected by behavior?
4. What are the different roots of persuasion? Give examples.
5. How does the foot-in-the-door technique work?
6. What was the name and the results of the Zimbardo experiment?
7. What is cognitive dissonance? How does it affect decision-making?
8. Who studied conformity?
9. What were the results of the Asch line experiment?
10. When is conformity at its highest?
11. What is the difference between social normative influence and informational influence?
12. Who studied obedience? When is obedience at its highest?
13. What is social facilitation? How does it work for difficult and easy tasks?
14. What is social loafing?
15. How does deindividuation work?
16. What is group polarization?
17. When has groupthink changed history?
18. What is the difference between prejudice and discrimination?
19. What causes prejudice?
20. What is outward homogeneity effect?
21. How does the just-world phenomenon explain prejudice?
22. What does the frustration-aggression say will lead to aggressive behavior?
23. What is the current view on catharsis theory?
24. Why are social traps bad?
25. How does the mere exposure effect related to attractiveness?
26. What three factors play into attraction?
27. What are the three types of love according to Sternberg?
28. What is altruism?

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29. How does the bystander effect play into altruism?

30. What is the main case associated with the bystander effect?
31. How do social exchange theory and reciprocity norm affect behavior?
32. What happened in the Robber’s Cave experiment? How did superordinate goals help?