AP Psychology 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A researcher manipulates the amount of sleep participants get and measures their reaction time. What is the dependent variable?
- Amount of sleep
- Reaction time (Correct answer)
- Number of participants
- Time of day
Correct answer: Reaction time
The dependent variable is what is measured, here reaction time.
Question 2: Which brain structure is most directly responsible for forming new long-term memories?
- Amygdala
- Cerebellum
- Hippocampus (Correct answer)
- Hypothalamus
Correct answer: Hippocampus
The hippocampus is essential for consolidating new explicit long-term memories.
Question 3: In classical conditioning, a tone that initially produces no response comes to trigger salivation after being paired with food. The tone is the:
- Unconditioned stimulus
- Conditioned stimulus (Correct answer)
- Unconditioned response
- Neutral response
Correct answer: Conditioned stimulus
After pairing, the previously neutral tone becomes the conditioned stimulus.
Question 4: A person attributes a stranger's rudeness to a bad personality rather than to a stressful situation. This illustrates the:
- Self-serving bias
- Fundamental attribution error (Correct answer)
- Just-world phenomenon
- Hindsight bias
Correct answer: Fundamental attribution error
Overestimating personality and underestimating situation in others is the fundamental attribution error.
Question 5: Which neurotransmitter is most associated with reward, movement, and is deficient in Parkinson's disease?
- Serotonin
- Dopamine (Correct answer)
- Acetylcholine
- GABA
Correct answer: Dopamine
Dopamine governs reward and movement; its loss underlies Parkinson's.
Question 6: According to Piaget, a child who understands that the amount of liquid stays the same when poured into a different-shaped glass has mastered:
- Object permanence
- Conservation (Correct answer)
- Egocentrism
- Theory of mind
Correct answer: Conservation
Conservation is recognizing quantity remains constant despite changes in shape.
Question 7: A normal distribution where the mean, median, and mode are all equal would appear as a:
- Positively skewed curve
- Negatively skewed curve
- Symmetric bell-shaped curve (Correct answer)
- Bimodal curve
Correct answer: Symmetric bell-shaped curve
In a normal distribution the three measures of central tendency coincide at the center of a symmetric bell curve.
AP Psychology 2
A researcher manipulates the amount of sleep participants get and measures their reaction time.
What is the dependent variable?