5 Steps to a 5: AP Psychology - McGraw Hill 2021
Review Questions
9 Cognition
STEP 4 Review the Knowledge You Need to Score High
Directions: For each question, choose the letter of the choice that best completes the statement or answers the question.
1. The three stages of the Atkinson—Shiffrin process of memory are
(A) iconic, echoic, encoding
(B) sensory, short term, long term
(C) shallow, medium, and deep processing
(D) semantic, episodic, procedural
(E) cerebellum, temporal lobe, hippocampus
2. Which of the following examples best illustrates episodic memory?
(A) telling someone how to tie a shoe
(B) answering correctly that the Battle of Hastings was in 1066
(C) knowing that the word for black in French is noir
(D) remembering that a clown was at your fifth birthday party
(E) long-term memory for the times tables learned in second grade
3. Doug wrote a grocery list of 10 items, but leaves it at home. The list included, in order, peas, corn, squash, onions, apples, pears, bananas, flour, milk, and eggs. If the law of primacy holds, which of the following is Doug most likely to remember when he gets to the store?
(A) peas, pears, eggs
(B) banana, flour, peas
(C) apples, pears, bananas
(D) flour, milk, eggs
(E) peas, corn, onions
4. In the preceding example, which of the items would be recalled in Doug’s short-term memory immediately after writing the list?
(A) peas, corn, squash
(B) peas, corn, onions
(C) apples, pears, bananas
(D) flour, milk, eggs
(E) flour, corn, bananas
5. According to the levels of processing theory of memory,
(A) we remember items that are repeated again and again
(B) maintenance rehearsal will encode items into our long-term memory
(C) deep processing involves elaborative rehearsal, ensuring encoding into long-term memory
(D) input, output, and storage are the three levels
(E) we can only hold seven items in our short-term memory store before it is full
6. Which of the following brain structures plays a key role in transferring information from short-term memory to long-term memory?
(A) hypothalamus
(B) thalamus
(C) hippocampus
(D) frontal lobe
(E) parietal lobe
7. Dai was drunk, so his girlfriend convinced him to get out of his car, and she drove him home in her car. He could not remember where his car was parked when he got up the next morning, but after drinking some liquor, Dai remembered where he left his car. This phenomenon best illustrates
(A) the misinformation effect
(B) mood-congruent memory
(C) the framing effect
(D) state-dependent memory
(E) anterograde amnesia
8. Phonemes are
(A) the rules of grammar that dictate letter combinations in a language
(B) the smallest unit of sound in a language
(C) the smallest unit of meaning in a language
(D) semantically the same as morphemes
(E) about 100 different words that are common to all languages
9. Because it has all of the features commonly associated with the concept bird, a robin is considered
(A) a prototype
(B) a schematic
(C) an algorithm
(D) a phenotype
(E) a heuristic
10. Compared to convergent thinkers, to solve a problem, divergent thinkers are more likely to
(A) process information to arrive at the single best answer
(B) think creatively and generate multiple answers
(C) problem solve in a systematic step-by-step fashion
(D) frequently suffer from functional fixedness
(E) use algorithms rather than heuristics to arrive at a solution
11. Unlike B. F. Skinner, Noam Chomsky believes that children
(A) learn to speak by mimicking the sounds around them
(B) speak more quickly if their parents correct their mispronunciations early
(C) are hard-wired for language acquisition
(D) learn language more quickly if positive rewards are given to them
(E) can learn to speak correctly only during a critical age
12. Which of the following is a good example of functional fixedness?
(A) failing to use a dime as a screwdriver when you have lost your screwdriver
(B) not being able to solve a physics problem because you apply the same rule you always do
(C) using a blanket as a pillow
(D) adding water to a cake mix when it calls for milk
(E) thinking of an apple first when you are asked to name fruits
13. Having been told that Syd is an engineer and Fran is an elementary school teacher, when Arnold meets the couple for the first time, he assumes that Syd is the husband and Fran is the wife, rather than the opposite, which is the case. This best illustrates
(A) confirmation bias
(B) cognitive illusion
(C) the mere exposure effect
(D) the anchoring effect
(E) the representativeness heuristic
14. Which of the following is a holophrase 1-year-old Amanda is likely to say?
(A) “Mmmmm”
(B) “Gaga”
(C) “Eat apple”
(D) “I eated the cookie”
(E) “Bottle”
15. Which of the following exemplifies retroactive interference?
(A) After suffering a blow to the head, Jean cannot form new memories.
(B) Elle failed a Spanish test because she studied for her Italian test after studying Spanish.
(C) Lee cannot remember an important date on the history exam.
(D) Gene cannot remember his new locker combination but remembers last year’s.
(E) Jodi remembers the first few items on her school supply list but can’t remember the rest of them.
16. A standardization sample for developing a test
(A) should be representative of all the types of people for whom the test is designed
(B) is an early version of the test to determine questions that differentiate individuals
(C) is a set of norms that will determine what score should be considered passing
(D) should include people from all different age groups, ethnic groups, and genders
(E) must include a standard set of directions for administering the test that all students will receive
17. Which of the following best describes Charles Spearman’s g of intelligence?
(A) There are many factors that determine intelligence, but genetics is the most important one.
(B) The internal validity of an intelligence test is g.
(C) A general intelligence that underlies success on a wide variety of tasks is g.
(D) Giftedness is determined by both innate ability to perform and experiences one has in life.
(E) The g is measured by the speed with which one can process information.
18. According to Sternberg, which of the following types of intelligence in his triarchic theory are measured by standard IQ tests?
I. analytic
II. practical
III. creative
(A) I only
(B) II only
(C) III only
(D) I and II only
(E) I, II, and III
19. Freddie is a 10-year-old boy with a mental age of 12. According to the scoring of the Stanford—Binet test, Freddie’s intelligence quotient score is
(A) 12
(B) 83
(C) 95
(D) 120
(E) 140
20. During development of standardized tests, questions that are answered correctly by almost all students and those that are missed by almost all students are eliminated. Why?
(A) Only questions that are moderately difficult should be included on a test.
(B) These questions fail to show individual differences in abilities.
(C) These questions are poorly written.
(D) The questions may be valid, but they are not reliable.
(E) This eliminates bias in administering the test.
21. Barika, who is 75, takes longer to solve problems that require abstract reasoning than she did when she was 35. This tendency indicates
(A) a decrease in her overall intelligence level
(B) an increase in her crystallized ability
(C) a decline in her fluid intelligence
(D) failing eyesight, which can be compensated for by large print being used on the test
(E) a problem in her concrete operational thought
Answers and Explanations
1. B—The three stages of the Atkinson—Shiffrin process of memory are sensory memory, short-term (working) memory, and long-term memory.
2. D—Episodic memories, like having a clown at your fifth birthday, are memories of events that happened to you personally—rather than factual semantic memories like dates, math problems, and French vocabulary—or procedural memories like how to tie a shoe.
3. E—Peas, corn, and onions all are words at the beginning of the list. The primacy effect refers to better recall for words at the beginning of a list, which have been transferred to long-term memory as a result of rehearsal.
4. D—Flour, milk, and eggs are the last items on the list. They are likely to be in our short-term memory for retrieval for 20 seconds unless rehearsed. Words at the beginning of the list, as in the preceding question, are more likely encoded into our long-term memories because we have rehearsed them more often than items at the end of the list.
5. C—Elaborative rehearsal enables deeper processing of information into long-term memory. It makes both encoding into and retrieval from long-term memory easier.
6. C—Although explicit memories are not necessarily stored in the hippocampus, we know that hippocampal damage does affect processing of explicit memories for semantic and episodic events into long-term memory.
7. D—Dai remembered where he left his car when he was in the same physiological state as when he was last in his car.
8. B—There are about 100 phonemes worldwide; the English language uses about 45 of them.
9. A—When asked to mention types of birds, an average or typical one likely to come to mind (a prototype) would be a robin because it has all the characteristics of the category.
10. B—Divergent thinkers think out of the box, generate more possible solutions, and are more creative thinkers than convergent thinkers.
11. C—Nativist Noam Chomsky has suggested that babies come equipped with a language acquisition device in their brains that is preprogrammed to analyze language as they hear it and determine its rules.
12. A—Using a dime to substitute for a screwdriver shows a lack of functional fixedness because you are able to come up with an unconventional way to use a standard item when needed.
13. E—Arnold made a faulty decision based on his prototypes that elementary school teachers are women and engineers are men.
14. E—The 1-year-old communicates that she wants a drink using a holophrase, one word.
15. B—In retroactive interference we can’t recall previously learned information, because newer information (Italian) disrupts the older information (Spanish) and makes it more difficult to retrieve.
16. A—For a standardization sample to be useful, it must fairly represent all the types of people who will be taking it at a future date.
17. C—Spearman’s g is a general ability that fuels many s, or special talents. His two-factor model does tend to support the genetic basis of intelligence, but g does not mean genetic.
18. A—Sternberg argued that traditional IQ tests are limited to measuring the analytical abilities of students—mostly verbal, mathematical, and logical reasoning. He believes that both practical and creative intelligence are overlooked by these tests but should be measured because of their importance in both adapting to the existing environment and shaping new ones.
19. D—The formula for determining the Stanford—Binet IQ score is MA/CA × 100. This formula shows that Freddie’s intelligence quotient would be 12/10 × 100, or 120.
20. B—Questions at either extreme are thrown out because these fail to show individual differences, which is the whole point of standardized tests.
21. C—Many older individuals like Barika show this decline in fluid intelligence, possibly because they get fewer opportunities to use their abstract reasoning. The speed at which they can answer these types of questions decreases as well. Their overall crystallized intelligence, or information that they have gathered over a lifetime, is often unimpaired.