AP AP Psychology & Human Behavior 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which neurotransmitter is most directly associated with the brain's reward pathway and is implicated in motivation, pleasure, and certain movement disorders?
- Serotonin
- Dopamine (Correct answer)
- GABA
- Acetylcholine
Correct answer: Dopamine
Dopamine is central to the mesolimbic reward pathway; deficits are linked to Parkinson's disease, while surpluses are associated with schizophrenia.
Question 2: The brain structure most responsible for regulating hunger, thirst, body temperature, and the sleep-wake cycle is the:
- Hippocampus
- Amygdala
- Hypothalamus (Correct answer)
- Cerebellum
Correct answer: Hypothalamus
The hypothalamus is the brain's homeostatic regulator, controlling vital drives such as hunger, thirst, and temperature to maintain internal balance.
Question 3: Absolute threshold is defined as the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus:
- 100% of the time it is presented
- 50% of the time it is presented (Correct answer)
- 75% of the time it is presented
- Just once under ideal conditions
Correct answer: 50% of the time it is presented
By convention, the absolute threshold is the stimulus intensity detected exactly 50% of the time across repeated trials.
Question 4: According to the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory of color vision, the eye contains three types of cone receptors sensitive to:
- Yellow, cyan, and magenta wavelengths
- Red, green, and blue wavelengths (Correct answer)
- Bright, medium, and dim light levels
- Short, medium, and long sound frequencies
Correct answer: Red, green, and blue wavelengths
Trichromatic theory proposes three cone types — sensitive to red, green, and blue light — whose combined signals produce the full range of color perception.
Question 5: Which part of the neuron receives incoming chemical signals from neighboring neurons?
- Axon
- Myelin sheath
- Dendrites (Correct answer)
- Terminal buttons
Correct answer: Dendrites
Dendrites are the branching extensions of a neuron that receive neurotransmitter signals at synapses from other neurons.
Question 6: The tendency to perceive a moving stimulus as stationary and a stationary background as moving is an example of:
- Signal detection
- Perceptual set
- Figure-ground organization (Correct answer)
- Stroboscopic motion
Correct answer: Figure-ground organization
Figure-ground organization is the Gestalt principle describing how we separate a perceived object (figure) from its surroundings (ground).
Question 7: Roger Sperry's split-brain research demonstrated which finding about hemispheric specialization?
- The two hemispheres are functionally identical in all tasks
- Language processing is predominantly located in the left hemisphere for most people (Correct answer)
- The corpus callosum generates conscious awareness independently
- Emotions are processed exclusively in the right hemisphere
Correct answer: Language processing is predominantly located in the left hemisphere for most people
Sperry's Nobel Prize-winning research showed that cutting the corpus callosum reveals the left hemisphere's dominance for language in the majority of people.
AP AP Psychology & Human Behavior 2
Which neurotransmitter is most directly associated with the brain's reward pathway and is implicated in motivation, pleasure, and certain movement disorders?