Xicheng Academy School 2023-2024 Semester I Mid-term Exam AP Psychology (Teacher: Fan Yang)

AP Psychology

2023.11
Class Name Student No.
Directions：
1. Answer ALL questions in Part A (60%) and Part B (40%).
2. Part A contains 40 multiple-choice questions. Each of the questions or incomplete statements below is followed by five suggested
answers or completions. Select the one that is best in each case and then fill in the corresponding square on the answer sheet.
3. Part B contains 1 free response questions. It is not enough to answer a question by merely listing facts. You should present a cogent
argument based on your critical analysis of the questions posed, using appropriate psychological terminology. You will only earn credit
for what you write on the answer sheet.
4. This is a closed-book exam. You are not allowed to refer to any material except the Glossary .
5. The time allowed is 40 minutes.

Part A
Ⅰ 、 Multiple Choice Questions （ 40 questions in total, 1.5 points for each question, with a total of 60

points.）
1. (2016.98) What field of psychology is most appropriate to analyze the efficiency of businesses in their hiring, basic
training, and management leadership skills training?
(A) Clinical
(B) Quantitative
(C) Industrial/organizational
(D) Educational
(E) Comparative

2. (2014.9) Introspection as practiced by early structuralists is best illustrated by which of the following behaviors?
(A) Describing one’s immediate sensations while looking at a rose
(B) Determining the best way for children to learn in school
(C) Conditioning an infant to fear rabbits
(D) Recalling one’s unconscious desires
(E) Creating intelligence tests for use in the military

3. (2013.50) A research psychologist generalizes from a particular sample to an entire population. This is an example
of
(A) random sampling
(B) statistical inference
(C) a correlational study
(D) stratified sampling
(E) descriptive statistics

4. (2016.11) What is the correct chronological order of the following perspectives of psychology, from past to
present?
I. Behaviorism
II. Psychoanalysis
III. Structuralism
IV. Humanism
(A) I, II, III, IV
(B) II, III, IV, I
(C) I, IV, III, II
(D) III, II, I, IV
(E) III, II, IV, I
5. (2014.14) In adult humans, which of the following is typically true of REM sleep?
(A) It is correlated with dreaming.
(B) It leads to a marked increase in muscle tone.
(C) It alternates with NREM sleep in 30-minute cycles.
(D) It occurs during the first half of an individual’s sleep cycle.
(E) It involves decreased blood pressure and heart rate.

6. (2012.17) Individuals who believe that an unpleasant experience is unavoidable and therefore do nothing to change
the course of events are exhibiting

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(A) self-actualization attributes

(B) the fight-or-flight response
(C) attributional deficits
(D) cognitive dissonance
(E) learned helplessness

7. (2016.52) A rat always completes a maze successfully but is only rewarded every third trial. The rat is being
rewarded using which of the following reinforcement schedules?
(A) Fixed-interval
(B) Fixed-ratio
(C) Variable-ratio
(D) Variable-interval
(E) Continuous

8. (2016.18) Which of the following would a social learning theorist be most likely to propose as a cause for a fear of
flying?
(A) A person has maladaptive thoughts about the safety of planes.
(B) A person observed someone else’s fear of flying.
(C) A person had been negatively reinforced for flying on a plane.
(D) The fear was passed on from parents genetically.
(E) The fear is related to childhood trauma.

9. (2014.80) Caffeine and nicotine are in the same class as which of the following drugs?
(A) Marijuana
(B) Valium
(C) Cocaine
(D) Alcohol
(E) Peyote

10. (2015.6) Standard deviation is a measure of how much

(A) a normal person’s behavior changes in a given time
(B) two sets of scores vary together
(C) difference there is between the highest and the lowest score in a sample
(D) scores in a group differ from the mean of that group
(E) scores from a sample differ from that of the population

11. (2012.77) An individual who drinks alcohol daily finds it necessary to drink increasing amounts to achieve the
state of well-being attained in the past. This individual is showing
(A) withdrawal symptoms
(B) alcohol-induced psychosis
(C) state-dependent learning
(D) alcohol tolerance
(E) delirium tremens
12. (2014.48) Ethical principles developed by the American Psychological Association help ensure that human
participants in psychological research
(A) get paid for their time and trouble
(B) have not participated in similar research in the past
(C) are protected from physical and psychological harm
(D) understand the hypotheses of the researcher before they take part
(E) keep the purposes of the research project confidential

13. (2014.77) Which of the following is an example of discrimination learning?

(A) A pigeon trained to peck a red key sometimes pecks an orange key.
(B) A four year old calls her aunt “Mommy.”
(C) A dog still salivates to the sound of a bell after ten trials of extinction.
(D) A rat avoids an electric shock by responding to the light that always precedes it.
(E) A dog trained to salivate to a particular tone does not salivate to any other tone.

14. (2013.77) A patient reports constant sleepiness. A series of tests reveal that the patient’s sleep is frequently
disrupted by periods of interrupted breathing and brief awakenings. Which of the following diagnoses would account
for such symptoms?
(A) Somnambulism
(B) Sleep terrors
(C) Narcolepsy
(D) REM behavior disorder
(E) Sleep apnea

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15. (2015.92) Jeff always tells his children not to use bad language when something does not go the way they want.
Unfortunately, Jeff uses bad language occasionally and his children have observed him do so. Now Jeff’s children use
bad language. This can be explained by
(A) learned helplessness
(B) social learning theory
(C) representativeness
(D) classical conditioning
(E) self-efficacy

16. (2014.95) Operational definitions are used for which of the following reasons?
(A) They enable researchers to replicate studies by precisely describing the variables and how they are used.
(B) They exclude mental processes from being studied, as they are no longer considered part of the scientific study of
psychology.
(C) They determine which test of statistical significance will be used to analyze the results of the experiment.
(D) They keep the participants in the control group from knowing they have received the placebo.
(E) They determine whether the experiment is better suited for a laboratory or a field setting.

17. (2019.57) Jeff lives in the United States, and he recently flew to Spain. Even after sleeping for several hours on
the flight, he still felt lethargic for a few days. If Jeff has not caught an illness, which of the following is the most
likely explanation for his physical response?
(A) His circadian rhythm has been disrupted.
(B) His stages of sleep are out of order.
(C) His delta waves have lost significant amplitude.
(D) He has narcolepsy.
(E) He is experiencing REM rebound.

18. (2019.69) In classical conditioning, repeated presentations of the conditioned stimulus without the unconditioned
stimulus lead to
(A) acquisition
(B) discrimination
(C) extinction
(D) backward conditioning
(E) stimulus generalization

19. (2012.45) Which of the following is the best example of shaping?

(A) A child receives five dollars each time he cleans his room.
(B) An employee receives a termination notice after coming to work late every day over a period of three months.
(C) A child gets candy from a dispenser one time but gets nothing from the dispenser the next two times.
(D) A teacher rewards a student for sitting quietly for ten minutes on Monday, fifteen minutes on Tuesday, twenty
minutes on Wednesday, and thirty minutes on Thursday.
(E) A rat receives a mild shock each time it tries to open the door of its cage.

20. (2012.81) A technique that enables a person to control physiological responses that are normally involuntary,
such as level of blood pressure, is known as
(A) general adaptation
(B) positive reinforcement
(C) reward training
(D) modeling
(E) biofeedback

21. (2019.94) Ernest and Josephine Hilgard conducted experiments in which participants had one hand in painfully
icy water and the other hand on a button to alert the experimenter of feelings of pain. After the participants were
hypnotized to not feel pain, participants did not verbally report feeling pain even though they subconsciously pressed
the button to indicate that they felt pain. How did the experimenters explain the contradiction in pain perception?
(A) The participants cannot be hypnotized.
(B) The participants are experiencing a psychotic breakdown.
(C) The participants are experiencing dissociation.
(D) The participants are repressing the pain in their unconscious.
(E) The participants are dreaming.

22. (2013.96) Four-year-old Scott fell down the stairs at his grandmother’s house. Although he was not badly hurt, he
was very frightened. Now, whenever his parents mention visiting his grandmother’s house, he feels anxious and
fearful. In classical conditioning terms, what are the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (UCS)
in the scenario, respectively?
(A) Grandmother’s house; fear
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Xicheng Academy School 2023-2024 Semester I Mid-term Exam AP Psychology (Teacher: Fan Yang)

(B) Grandmother’s house; falling

(C) Fear; grandmother’s house
(D) Falling; anxiety
(E) Anxiety; fear

23. (2014.54) Which of the following statements best describes the placebo effect?
(A) It can be brought about by the individual’s expectations.
(B) It can be induced by antipsychotic drugs.
(C) It is found only among individuals in psychoanalysis.
(D) It is considered an invalid concept in research on client-centered therapy.
(E) It is typically experienced by individuals in long-term therapy

24. (2019.72) Which of the following approaches to psychology focuses on adaptive, creative, and fulfilling aspects
of human experiences?
(A) Behavioral
(B) Positive
(C) Functional
(D) Psychodynamic
(E) Motivational

25. (2019.44) Participants were asked to rate the importance of achieving honor-roll status. Researchers found that
students from smaller families rated the importance more highly than students from larger families. The research team
concluded that a student’s attitude toward school achievement is the result of family size. Which of the following is
the most important error made by the research team?
(A) Perceiving order in random events
(B) Generalizing from extreme examples
(C) Using self-report data
(D) Failing to randomly assign participants to conditions
(E) Assuming that correlation proves causation

26. (2016.39) To stop his uncle’s constant requests, Jimmy takes out the garbage. This makes him more likely to take
out the garbage in the future. Jimmy’s behavior is being controlled by which of the following types of reinforcement?
(A) Intermittent
(B) Positive
(C) Negative
(D) Vicarious
(E) Delayed

27. (2014.96) Learning that is not demonstrated at the time it occurs is called
(A) conceptualization learning
(B) social learning
(C) latent learning
(D) schematic learning
(E) insight learning

28. (2014.52) Money most often modifies people’s behavior because it is a powerful
(A) negative reinforcer
(B) secondary reinforcer
(C) conditioned stimulus
(D) high-order stimulus
(E) discriminative stimulus

29. (2018.48) A four-year-old child frequently pulled on the dog's tail to gain attention. To reduce this undesirable
behavior, the parent took away one hour of television viewing every time the child pulled the dog's tail. Within one
week, the undesirable behavior was significantly reduced.
The above scenario illustrates
(A) positive reinforcement
(B) negative reinforcement
(C) negative punishment
(D) positive punishment
(E) extinction

30. (2016.6) A psychologist gives the same test to a class of students at the beginning of the day and again at the end
of the school day. The extent to which test scores are similar across the two administrations demonstrates which of
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the following test properties?

(A) Validity
(B) Reliability
(C) Standardization
(D) Statistical significance
(E) Utility

31. (2014.34) The nature-nurture issue is best exemplified by which of the following questions?
(A) Is perception accomplished by passive detection of images in the environment or by active detection of
information?
(B) Is language acquisition fairly complete by the early school years, or are most linguistic forms mastered only in
adolescence?
(C) Is gender identity most influenced by parental upbringing or by interaction with same-sex peers?
(D) Does development proceed through a series of stages, or is it continuous?
(E) Is level of intelligence the result of one’s environment and specific learning, or is it a result of biological
maturation?

32. (2019.23) Sara had an argument with her coworker, Adam. That night, Sara had a dream that she was shopping at
a mall and Adam was in every store in which she shopped. A psychoanalyst would say that Adam’s being at the mall
in her dream was an example of which of the following?
(A) The manifest content
(B) The latent content
(C) Memory consolidation
(D) Repression
(E) A hypnagogic hallucination

33. (2017.61) The “Little Albert” study demonstrated that

(A) humans can learn through observation
(B) biological constraints affect learning in humans
(C) fear can be conditioned in humans
(D) punishment can effectively decrease behavior in humans
(E) learning in humans is fundamentally different from learning in other species

34. (2016.77) Dylan has difficulty solving a physics problem in class. The next day, he suddenly thinks of a solution
to the problem as he is watching a friend play the guitar. The thought process that Dylan experienced is an example of
(A) spontaneous recovery
(B) social learning
(C) discrimination
(D) latent learning
(E) insight learning

35. (2013.46) Which of the following characterizes a behavioral approach to psychology?

(A) A study of the unconscious motives involved in behavior
(B) An introspective study of the mental imagery used in problem solving
(C) An analysis of the neurons involved in memory storage
(D) The use of a projective test to assess personality
(E) A study of how reinforcement affects learning

36. (2019.38) In a recent report, a developmental psychologist who studied peer pressure in middle schools obtained
data from a large, representative sample of adolescents across the United States. This research most likely involved a
(A) survey
(B) case study
(C) laboratory experiment
(D) naturalistic observation
(E) single-subject design

37. (2012.34) In order to yield information that is generalizable to the population from which it was drawn, a sample
must be
(A) made up of at least 30 members of the population
(B) as large as possible
(C) normally distributed
(D) representative of the population
(E) made up of at least 50 percent of the members of the population

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Xicheng Academy School 2023-2024 Semester I Mid-term Exam AP Psychology (Teacher: Fan Yang)

38. (2017.67) Mathematics achievement scores from a group of tenth graders are shown above. The distribution is
normal with a standard deviation of 10. Approximately what percentage of students scored between 50 and 80?
(A) 50%
(B) 68%
(C) 75%
(D) 82%
(E) 96%

39. (2014.73) B. F. Skinner’s claim that the environment determines an individual’s behavior was criticized for
(A) failing to explain how personality can change over time
(B) failing to acknowledge cognitive influences on behavior
(C) failing to acknowledge situational factors
(D) attributing behavior solely to genetics
(E) emphasizing unconscious influences on behavior

40. (2015.85) Which of the following is an example of an individual who demonstrates an internal locus of control?
(A) A woman believes that the reason she is often late to work is because of the traffic in her neighborhood.
(B) A student volunteers at a food shelter because her school club requires community service of its members.
(C) A man thinks that his displays of aggression are due to the extra caffeine he has been consuming lately.
(D) A student decides to run for student government because he feels he can make some positive changes in the
school.
(E) A teacher decides that students are noisy in her afternoon classes because of the energy they get after eating
lunch.

Part B
II．Free Response Questions（8 questions in total, 5 points for each question, with a total of 40 points.）

Dr. Yang hypothesized that the more witnesses there are to a crime, the less likely any one witness will help. She
collected data on the number of people who helped someone in distress and the number of people walking by at that
particular time. Dr. Yang found the following statistically significant results.

Part A
 Explain how the data presented in the graph above support or do not support Dr.Yang’s hypothesis.
 Identify the statistical measure that Dr. Yang would use to assess the strength of the relationship between
variables.
 Explain how the third variable problem could influence the results.

Part B
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Xicheng Academy School 2023-2024 Semester I Mid-term Exam AP Psychology (Teacher: Fan Yang)

Dr. Yang decides to conduct an experiment to test whether the number of people present during a staged emergency
situation will influence helping behavior.
 Identify the independent variable and dependent variable in this study.

Part C
Explain how each of the following is related to helping behavior.
 Internal locus of control
 Modeling
 Operant conditioning

Part D
 How do evolutionary psychologists explain the appearance of helping behavior?

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