AP Psychology Practice Test: Language & Cognition

After suffering a brain injury in a car accident, Russell cannot form new memories. He can, however, remember his life experiences before the accident. Russell’s memory problem most clearly illustrates:

On the first day of her new job, Jess is introduced to twelve new coworkers. Moments later, she can only remember the names of the first two and last two coworkers. Her experience illustrates what memory-based psychological concept?

In attempting to find and purchase high-quality makeup products, Carla believes that the most expensive brands are the best quality. Carla’s belief illustrates the use of:

Which of the following is an example of a 2-year-old Sophia’s overextension in language?

What is the highest need on Maslow’s hierarchy?

Dora plans to donate a portion of her allowance to either a foundation focused on increasing the accessibility of AIDS medication or an organization focused on malaria prevention. Believing that AIDS is more prevalent she chose AIDS. It turns out that fewer people have AIDS than malaria, but she has heard more about AIDS in her lifetime so she recalls more stories pertaining to that disease. What was Dora using when reasoning about the frequency of these two diseases?

What are phonemes?

Who developed the linguistic relativity hypothesis? That is, that language patterns play a dominant role in shaping a person’s thoughts and behavior.

A robin is judged to be a better example of a bird than some others, a parrot or flamingo, for example. Therefore, a robin would be considered a(n) _______ of birds.

On Monday, the meteorologist forecast a 20% chance of rain, so Jose took his umbrella to work. On Wednesday, the meteorologist reported an 80% chance of sunshine, so Jose left his umbrella at home. Jose’s behavior illustrates what psychological concept?

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

Which linguist is most closely associated with the concept of universal grammar? He challenged behaviorist accounts of language acquisition.

In order to determine if someone has just said “bark” or “park,” you have to discriminate the initial sound, or:

Bill uses a “rule of thumb, a judgmental short cut when solving a maze quickly on an iPad app. He is using:

People tend to seek out and find more convincing evidence that is consistent with an already-held view. This pattern, which can lead one astray, is known as what?

Which of the following is considered to be a possible cause of the misinformation effect?

You would be more likely to agree to a surgery with a 50% success rate than a 50% failure rate. What psychological concept illustrates this concept?

If you ask most Americans where they were when they learned about the 9/11 attack, you will likely hear a vivid, detailed recollection. This is an example of a somewhat controversial phenomenon called:

Interference theory and decay theory are contrasting ideas to explain what memory process?

Kelly is studying for her AP Psychology exam and knows that she is more likely to retain more information if she studies for two hours a day for fifteen days than if she studies six hours a day for five days.

While either way, she is contributing 30 hours to studying, her idea that studying two hours a day instead of six hours a day is based on evidence for what memory concept?

Mary scores at the 87^th percentile. In testing, this means: