+AAMC Psych/Soc Analyses

AAMC Full Length 3: 51 / 59 (130)

1) Egocentrism is part of 5 year olds (Piaget)
2) Neuroticism does not predict interpersonal attraction. Odd man out
3) Validity question
4) Incorrect. Obviously the question is asking for “two separate skills”. B, C, and D are possible
candidates. C just doesn’t make sense. B is “impairments in recognizing faces” which doesn’t
really have much to do with empathy. Only D really says, “difficulty inferring others’ feelings”,
which deals with empathy. Tricky.
5) Flashbulb memory – subjectively vivid, compelling memories of details associated with
reception of news about emotionally arousing events
6) Episodic memory = personally experienced episodes with tags for context and time
7) Intrusions of false information into episodic memories of events (false memories).
8) Generalizability
9) Incorrect. “Restriction of the focus of attention”. I guess C and D just cancel each other out.
Emotional arousal seems to focus a person’s attention on the central features of an event.
Memory for the fundamental gist of the emotional event is retained, whereas memory for details
(if they are encoded at all) either fades or undergoes changes.
10) Cones = color
11) Graph reading
12) Incorrect. Mistake. These are classic symptoms of a panic attack: Pounding heart, chest pain,
shortness of breath, sweating, and feeling dizzy. Just think of Tony Soprano
13) REM rebound
14) Basic graph reasoning
15) Basic graph reading
16) Group therapy may allow for observational learning
17) Self fulfilling prophecy
18) Social capital is not directly related to measuring SES. Three main components of SES are
occupation, income, and education.
19) Incorrect. The correlation between SES and level of exposure to stress would be negative,
not positive, since the lower the SES, the higher the stress.
20) Stressors are related to anger and hostility, which have been found to be associated with
increased risk of heart disease
21) Hypothalamus signals endocrine system
22) Depressive disorder = loneliness, anxiety, low self esteem
23) Self fulfilling prophecy
24) Fundamental attribution error – only others!
25) Validity may be increased when two independent measures of the same variable converge
26) Dichotic listening task = presenting two different auditory messages, one to each ear
27) Extinction
28) Life course perspective
29) Almost made a mistake—which would provide greatest challenge to the theory of social
construction of race? Genomic differences
30) Incorrect. What were you thinking? “Some theoretical models predict that exposure to
prejudice and discrimination will contribute to elevated levels of alcohol consumption among
some racial and ethnic minority groups.” The question asked for what assumption this is based
on. Individuals may attribute stressful experiences to their status as members of a racial/ethnic
group.
31) Graph reading
32) PET = function and structure
33) Passage comprehension
34) Nice—conformity. Peer groups are primary groups.
35) POE
36) Dependent variable—easy money
37) Groupthink – agree to same behavior
38) Group polarization
39) Observational learning from parents
40) Cannot conclude statistical significance
41) Incorrect. Overthinking and a mistake. We cannot tell based from the table that there is a
significant positive correlation between age and religious attendance.
42) Conflict theory
43) Easy
44) Incorrect. You didn’t know that NMDA receptors are a subtype of glutamate receptor. Even
so, the other answer choices, including yours, do not make sense or answer the question.
45) Intragenerational mobility
46) Same signal to two separate strains produced opposing results. The pheromone would be
detected by chemosensory neurons
47) Self-verification – tendency to seek out (and agree with) information that is consistent with
one’s self concept.
48) Five factor model
49) Study 1 states that aggression and oppositional behaviors had the strongest association with
risk of hunger. Serotonin is involved in the regulation of both mood (specifically, aggression)
and appetite (it is also used to regulate intestinal movements)
50) Conscientiousness, neuroticism
51) Drive theory (reduction)
52) Role strain = 1 role
53) Dependent variables
54) Passage reading.
55) Symbolic interactionist – studying social practices and rituals
56) Reasoning
57) Hidden curriculum = latent function of schools
58) Incorrect. “In order to balance on one foot, many people need to have their eyes open”
Sensory interaction is the idea the one sensory modality (vision) may influence another
(balance). Your answer choice, vestibular sense, only addresses balances and does not deal with
the entire question. Really, on obvious question.
59) Closure (gestalt principles)

AAMC Full Length 2: 57 / 59 (131)

1) Fovea is directly involved in color sensation
2) Passage comprehension, “continuous pattern”
3) Occipital lobes are responsible for vision
4) Fixed ratio
5) In the last paragraph, it is suggested that differences in the ways that immigrants adopt local
traditions can result in distinct geographic patterns of assimilation. = “cultural values and norms”
6) Incorrect. WWII = increased fertility, always
7) Conflict theorist – competition over resources, political power, etc
8) Dependency ratio = ratio of the number of economically dependent members of the population
to the number of the economically productive members.
9) Linguistic relativity hypothesis – human cognition is affected by language
10) Source monitoring – likely to think of the old made-up names as famous names
11) Dissociative disorder – selectively forgetting distracting elements of his life
12) Operant conditioning – increased reward seeking
13) Meritocracy
14) Relative poverty – social disadvantage by income or wealth as compared to the social
advantages linked to income or wealth in a society
15) Common concept that comes up. More assimilated groups will have lower levels of support
and worse overall health. Strong social support in local immigrant communities may partly
explain the relatively good health of individuals from some immigrant groups in the US (when
compared to US born individuals with otherwise similar demographic characteristics. more
assimilated groups are likely to have less social support over time
16) Reading comprehension. Socioeconomic gradient in health = graded relationship between
social class and health
17) Fundamental Attribution error – stressing the importance of dispositional factors in one’s
explanations of other people’s behavior and underemphasizing situational factors
18) Schematic processing is relevant to explaining response times during IAT because the speed
with which memory schemas (organized clusters of knowledge) are activated and processed is
presumed to indicate the participant’s implicit attitude
19) Cognitive component of attitude – consists of beliefs and ideas
20) For socially sensitive topics such as weight, participants may be more likely to provide
socially acceptable answers during interviews or phone surveys. Internet responses do not elicit
the same level of social desirability.
21) In group vs out group associations – bias tends to be directed toward out-group members
22) Passage comprehension
23) Discrimination and poverty in explaining patient’s behavior – situational explanations
24) Craving symptoms (strong desire to ingest a drug) are consistent with the description in the
relevant passage section
25) Hallucinogens have the lowest risk of dependence.
26) Conflict theory – class based conceptions – stratification
27) Dopamine agonist enhances functioning of dopamine – produces euphoria
28) Attitude = prejudice, behavior = discrimination. Without a description of differential
treatment or behavior, discrimination is not identified
29) POE. If participants are not equally likely to be in the two groups, there is a potential bias in
the sample.
30) Social loafing – people are more productive alone than in a group
31) Dependent variable identification
32) Passage comprehension
33) Piaget’s stages
34) Amygdala – emotion
35) Passage comprehension
36) Passage comprehension
37) Erikson’s stages
38) Freud’s stages
39) Groupthink – presence of conformity pressures and beliefs of superiority that lead decision-
making groups to fail to critically evaluate their alternatives and options
40) How to combat groupthink
41) Experimental design
42) Confirmation bias = groupthink on an individual level
43) Vocabulary skills are lateralized to the left hemisphere
44) Interference
45) Individuals who delay gratification are emotionally intelligent
46) Escape learning
47) Experimental design
48) Conditioned stimulus
49) Acquisition
50) Independent variable
51) Increased synaptic connections = better memory
52) Randomly assigned = experimental
53) Cognitive behavior therapy = systematic modification of individual behavior and self
assessments: addresses maladaptive behaviors through behavior therapy to systematically modify
a person’s behavior; followed by sessions designed to foster cognitive change, through self
assessments
54) Structural functionalism and yoga – latent functions, the only answer that makes sense
55) Medicalization
56) Incorrect. Mistake. No observational was seen, but there was correlational. Clear mistake.
57) Negative correlation
58) Hawthorne effect, Thomas Theorem
59) Similar income = horizontal mobility

Section Bank Analysis: 77/100

*1). Definition I didn’t know. “Shadowing” = repeating digits presented to a specific ear,
immediately after. Recall usually entails a longer time than immediately repeating back
something.
2) Good. Verbal inputs to the left ear, which first go to the auditory cortex in the right
hemisphere, must be processed by the language areas of the left hemisphere. The only possible
answer.
3) Misinterpretation of the question. Test battery – series of test for an applicant of a position,
which is what they did in the passage. Even without this knowledge, you leapt to an erroneous
assumption.
4) Simple logical prediction based on passage
5) Simple logical prediction based on passage
6) Simple definition – selective attention
7) Basic table reading
8) Mistake, wrong interpretation. It is unreasonable to say that the researchers had eliminated al
the variables that confounded interpretation.
9) Basic IQ and statistical knowledge
10) Basic knowledge of brain structures. Hypothalamus is concerned largely with maintenance
of homeostatic equilibrium
*11) Factual info I did not know. Cocaine is a stimulant that has a physiological effect similar to
stress, and hence glucose metabolism is expected to increase. Pain relief is associated with
heroin, not cocaine. Also, just because Cocaine is in the blood doesn’t mean it is
pharmacologically active.
12) Basic neuron biology
13) Easy. Continuous reinforcement is best at the beginning of acquisition phase of operant
conditioning
14) Basic twin study
*15) Did not know. Instinctual drift is the phenomenon whereby well-established habits, learned
using operant techniques, eventually are replaced by innate food-related behaviors.
16) Serial-position effect
**17) Had to look this one up. It is known that fluid, not crystallized, intelligence, decreases with
age. Choice D (ability to retrieve general information) sounds like crystallized intelligence.
18) Simple question-stem passage information
19) Simple – episodic memory
20) Simple interpretation of passage section
21) Mistake. Social reproduction is another thing entirely—it is the structures in society that
serve to perpetuate social inequality. Music is so obviously an agent of socialization.
22) Easy. POE and passage interpretation
23) Easy. Cultural transmission definition
*24) Did not know this one. Distal Stimulus – objects and event out in the world about you.
Proximal stimulus – patterns of stimuli from these objects and events that actually are registered
by the sensory receptors. Most of the time, perception reflects the properties of distal objects and
events very accurately, much more accurately than you might expect from the apparently limited,
varying, unstable pattern of proximal stimulus the brain gets
25) Knowledge of gestalt principles
26) Gestalt definition
27) Wrong interpretation, mistake. I thought that the choice I picked wasn’t a gestalt principle
that was listed in the passage. However, the correct choice was something that wasn’t even a
gestalt principle to begin with, making it the better answer.
28) POE, guessed at the answer choice—valid method btw. Psychophysical discrimination
methods directly assess our perception of stimuli in relation to their true physical properties
29) POE, easy—context effects
30) Easy POE/guess. Flashbulb memory—when people claimed to remember every detail of
what they were doing when they received news about an emotionally arousing event.
31) Two of the answer choices eliminate each other. D is the best choice.
32) False memory – generally given with high confidence
33) Kohlberg’s theory of moral development—the answer choices give it away
*34) I’m still not sure. In operant condition, you just operationally define the subject’s
motivational state by depriving the subject of some desirable stimulus item for a period of time.
35) Easy—not a definition you know, but POE and guessing at the name, passage
comprehension
36) Easy—survey responses can suffer from decay in episodic memory.
37) Twin studies—you have this concept down
38) Passage comprehension / experimental design
39) Guess at definition. Sensitive period—identifies a point in early development that can have a
significant influence on physiological or behavioral functioning in alter life.

Note: It is my functioning hypothesis that the MCAT will put definitions that are all valid
definitions of some sort. So if something you haven’t heard of nevertheless sounds like the right
thing, then go for it 100%.

40) Passage comprehension

41) Could have gotten. Incentive theory—factors outside individuals, including community
values and other aspects of culture, can motivate behavior. All the other choices, like humanistic
theory, clearly focuses on aspects of motivation within the individual.
42) Guess at correct answer. Social epidemiology focuses on the contribution of social and
cultural factors to disease factors in population.
43) Easy. Cultural relativism vs ethnocentrism
44) Cultural capital refers to knowledge, skills, education, similar characteristics that associate
with difference in status
45) Easy. Cognitive dissonance described in passage
46) Easy. Question stem – POE. Social cognitive theory (social learning theory) suggests that
behaviors are learned through observing others and modeling their actions.
47) Purely definition. Intersectionality calls attention to how identity categories intersect in
systems of social stratification. Black lesbian.
48) Symbolic interactions – ex: how healthcare providers stablish rapport, show empathy, and
navigate disagreements with their patients
49) Looking-glass self – suggests that self-concept is influenced by how we perceive that others
are viewing us. Based on this theory, a person who acquires a stigmatized illness is likely to
internalize the stigmatization directed against him
50) Population pyramid – shows an aging population – inverse pyramid shape – population likely
to decrease in size
51) Demographic transition theory – addresses changes in the birth rate and the death rate that
are associated with economic development. The typical pattern begins with a drop in death rate,
leading to population growth, followed by a drop in the birth rate, leading to population
stabilization
52) Blatant mistake. Didn’t read passage. fMRI is an imaging technique that measures brain
activity by detecting associated changes in blood flow.
53) Case where most extreme answer isn’t chosen
54) Sleep cycle II – spindles and k complexes
55) Piaget’s theory – preoperational stage = 2-7
**56) This is just a ridiculous question. POE I guess. Cerebellum is not a primary structure of
the reward system. Nucleus accumbens, hypothalamus, and amygdala are part of the reward
system of the brain.
**57) Ridiculous. From an evolutionary standpoint, humans have developed a preference for
high caloric foods because they are a good source of fuel in the form of fat.
58) Universal emotions knowledge
59) Stranger anxiety is usually at around 8 months of age.
60) Not a part of visual system. Place theory posits that one is able to hear different pitches
because different sound waves trigger activity at different places along the cochlea’s basilar
membrane.
61) fMRI uses magnetic fields and radio waves to look at brain function and measures blood
flow, not glucose.
62) passage comprehension
63) Correlation
64) Basic neuron biology
65) Mistake, misinterpretation of answer choice. Fovea contains the highest density of cones for
daytime vision, whereas the periphery of the retina contains a high density of rods which are
more photosensitive and can detect dim light.
66) Reliability vs validity
67) Basic question stem.
68) Basic passage interpretation / research methods
69) Easy – emotional flattening is a negative symptom
*70) I don’t really understand. Negative priming requires the use of implicit memory? priming in
general is a key player in implicit memory. it takes no conscious effort. Positive priming speeds
up the reaction to the stimulus. Negative priming slows down reaction to the stimulus.
71) Barely recalled it. Neuroleptics are the first antipsychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenia
and though they are effective in treating positive symptoms, their side effects include cognitive
dulling, which can exacerbate negative symptoms.
72) Research design
73) Good guess. Alzheimer’s is characterized by cognitive dysfunction particularly in the tasks
of verbal fluency and negative priming
74) Stress-Diasthesis passage. You made this key misinterpretation—AAMC will always make
sense, keep looking harder!
75) Choosing tests – common sense
76) Lack of knowledge on General Adaptation syndrome. Individual only enters exhaustion
stage (after alarm and resistance) after prolonged encounter with stressor
**77) Not sure honestly. “Isolation” is a more concrete event than interpersonal tension, which
causes the isolation. It is something outside of our control Other answers are internal cognitive
states.
78) You really had no idea on this one. The point is you can’t prevent stressful life events. “One
model that accounts for the chronic nature of depression is the stress generation hypothesis—SG
is all about cycling, chronic depression—the therapist would most likely focus on this.
79) Mistake – forgot what a reciprocal relationship was. Unbelievable.
80) Conscious effort is needed to process novel information
81) Signal detection (hit rates)
82) POE
83) Split brain hemispheres: images projected to a visual field are represented in the opposite
hemisphere of the brain
84) Cognitive dissonance – people tend to change their attitudes to match their behaviors, rather
than the other way around.
85) Repeat – preoperational stage occurs from ages 2-7 years old
86) Good reasoning, POE
87) Basic passage comprehension
88) Agent of socialization = media
89) Good research design
90) Symbolic interactionist perspective example: stigmatizing example creates a negative label
to which the patients interpreted and responded
91) Mistake, should have gotten. Self-assessment of medical student completed at the end of the
communications course would be cross-sectional data.
94) Could have gotten. Sanctions can be positive or negative.

AAMC Practice Test 1 – wrong answers

7) The panic attacks are positive punishers. They changed his behavior by reducing the
frequency of his going to meetings, and were described as highly aversive. Could get
21) Mistake. POE. All the other choices are wrong. It might sound like an ethical consideration
to use anxiety patients, but this is the most plausible answer. Could get
37) Cuban-Mexican immigrant question. SES vs Assimilation. “Based on the results of the
study.” Kind of ambiguous. Could have gotten this.
38) The answer to this question is D. Social support refers to social network ties (friends, family,
and other relationships that provide an individual with various types of assistance, which are
associated with improving health or reducing harm. All of the response options except for D
addresses the health benefits of networks. The correct answer identifies activities rather than
relationships. Also, A and B cancel each other out. Could have gotten
44) Basic Passage Comprehension, mistake. ADHD impulsive behavior, nowhere mentions
motivation
46) Mistake. Reference group vs majority group. Easy question—get a better sense for these
Could have gotten
51) In psychology, larger groups are considered more stable but less intimate, while smaller
groups are considered less stable but more intimate. Triads > Dyads

Sample Test – wrong answers

2) Spreading Activation – mistake. Could have gotten
12) Confirmation bias – tendency to favor information that confirms existing beliefs. Involves
biases in the search for information and in the interpretation of evidence. Is stronger for
emotionally charged topics – Could have gotten
28) Mistake. You need an experimental set of controls and random assignment to determine
causality. Could have gotten
47) Nativity Status
To Do:
Review ages of developmental theories
Go over TPR again