All AP Psychology Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #51 : Influential Psychologists
Which of the following pairs of people made important contributions to psychology that involved cognition and linguistics?
Chomsky and Whorf
Chomsky and Rogers
Whorf and Rogers
Chomsky and Wundt
Wundt and Zimbardo
Chomsky and Whorf
Noam Chomsky is a cognitive psychologist and linguist who is most famous for his nativist theory of language. This theory rests on a critique of Skinner’s idea that language is learned through conditioning and instead suggests that children are born with a language acquisition device that allows them to learn language from birth. in a similar vein, Benjamin Lee Whorf is a cognitive linguist who is most famous for his idea that the language you speak affects the way that you view and think about the world, otherwise known as linguistic relativity or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Example Question #52 : Influential Psychologists
Which of the following pairs of people made their contributions primarily to the branch of developmental psychology?
Rogers and Piaget
Erikson and Piaget
Wundt and Zimbardo
Erikson and Rogers
Zimbardo and Piaget
Erikson and Piaget
Erik Erikson was a developmental psychologist who is famous for developing the psychosocial stages of development, each of which involved a conflict or crisis between the wants of the individual and the wants of the society, such as trust vs. distrust in infancy. In a similar way, Jean Piaget was a developmental psychologist who is famous for developing a cognitive theory of development, which centered around figuring out why and how people (particularly children) make mistakes as a way of figuring out their ways of thinking. Based on that research, Piaget came up with stages of cognitive development—sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete operational, and formal operational.
Example Question #53 : Influential Psychologists
In 1921, which of the following scientists discovered the first neurotransmitter through experimentation with frog hearts?
Josef Breuer
Aristotle
Otto Lowei
Pierre Broca
Santiago Ramon y Cajal
Otto Lowei
In 1921, Otto Lowei discovered the first neurotransmitter. He dissected a frog heart with the vagas nerve still attached in order to allow the heart to beat. He ran an electrical current through the heart and was able to slow the heartbeat. Lowei then dissected out another frog heart in the same manner. He poured liquid obtained from the first, slowed frog heart into the dish containing the newly dissected heart. Immediately, the second heart’s beat slowed down. Lowei had provided evidence for the existence of neurons—which were discovered by Santiago Ramon y Cajal—and demonstrated neural communication by way of neurotransmitters.
Example Question #231 : History And Research
in 1912, Carl Jung, a young apprentice of Sigmund Freud, split apart from Freud after a close friendship over differences regarding psychoanalytic theory. What was the main difference between Freud and Jung's psychoanalytic philosophies?
Jung thought Freud didn't give enough emphasis on sexuality as a motivating force
Jung disagreed with Freud's belief of behavior being caused by future aspirations as well as childhood motivations
Jung thought neurosis was a personal disorder, while Freud believed it was a universal, transcendental disorder.
Jung disagreed with Freud's main focus of therapy being to heal the soul
Jung saw Freud's theory of the unconscious as too negative and incomplete
Jung saw Freud's theory of the unconscious as too negative and incomplete
The main difference between Freud and Jung's psychoanalytic philosophies was that Freud's conception of the unconscious. Jung saw Freud's theory of the unconscious as too negative and incomplete. Jung believed that the unconscious was not only a source of creativity and positivity, but also that there were two unconscious levels. He believed that there was a personal level of unconscious as well as an ancestral level of unconscious called the collective unconscious. These were the primary conflicts between Freud and Jung. The other answers given are incorrect, because all of the listed tenets were Jung’s beliefs, not Freud’s.
Example Question #54 : Influential Psychologists
Which of the following leaders in the field of psychology is incorrectly matched with his contribution?
Binet: IQ testing
Kohlberg: moral reasoning
Skinner: classical conditioning
Milgram: obedience
Asch: conformity
Skinner: classical conditioning
Lawrence Kohlberg's moral reasoning theory stated that there are three levels of moral reasoning, including preconventional, conventional, and postconventional. Alfred Binet developed the first intelligence test. The current Stanford-Binet 5 (SB5) is based on his work. Solomon Asch studied conformity by having research participants estimate the length of a series of lines in front of a group. Stanley Milgram studied obedience to authority by having research participants believe they were delivering electric shocks to confederates. B.F. Skinner is the only theorist that is incorrectly matched. Skinner is associated with operant conditioning, which looks at the influence of reinforcement and punishment on people's behaviors. Ivan Pavlov and John Watson are associated with classical conditioning.
Example Question #1740 : Ap Psychology
Which of the following psychologists was the first to use introspection?
Max Wertheimer
Wilhelm Wundt
William James
Sigmund Freud
Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Wundt was the first to set up a psychology lab in order to train subjects in introspection. This process consisted of asking subjects to record their cognitive reactions to simple stimuli.
Example Question #1741 : Ap Psychology
Which of the following intelligence theorists is incorrectly matched to their corresponding theory or contribution?
Louis Thurstone: concept of g factor
Daniel Goleman: concept of emotional intelligence
Alfred Binet: developed first intelligence test
Robert Sternberg: 3 components of intelligence
Howard Gardner: 8 types of intelligence
Louis Thurstone: concept of g factor
Charles Spearman, not Louis Thurstone, developed the concept of the g factor. The g factor refers to a person's general intelligence that can be reflected in an IQ score. General intelligence is believed to impact a person's performance on cognitive tasks. Louis Thurstone is credited with diverging from the idea of general intelligence and proposing 7 types of primary mental abilities, including verbal comprehension, reasoning, perceptual speed, numerical ability, word fluency, associative memory, and spatial visualization. Daniel Goleman proposed the idea of emotional intelligence, which is the ability to process and understand emotions. Howard Sternberg proposed three components of intelligence: analytical (e.g. problem-solving ability), practical (e.g ability to adapt to change), and creative (e.g. ability to deal with new situations). Howard Gardner identified the following 8 types of intelligence: visual-spatial, verbal-linguistic, bodily-kinesthetic, logical-mathematical, interpersonal, musical, intrapersonal, and naturalistic. Last, Alfred Binet developed the first reliable intelligence test when working with children.
Example Question #51 : Influential Psychologists
Which psychologist used nonsense, three-letter words to study memory and concluded that forgetting has a curvilinear relationship with time and ultimately plateaus or levels off?
Noam Chomsky
Hermann Ebbinghaus
Elizabeth Loftus
B. F. Skinner
Hermann Ebbinghaus
The correct answer is "Hermann Ebbinghaus." He was the first known psychologist to conduct scientific studies on memory. His research began around 1878 and (as briefly explained in the question) involved studying how long an individual could recall nonsense, three-letter words after they were initially studied. Interestingly, Ebbinghaus used himself as his only subject. He repeated the list of meaningless words to himself, waited for a certain amount of time to elapse, and then attempted to recall the full list. He found that he forgot a large amount of the information within an hour and even more within a day; however, after that point, the amount forgotten decreased significantly—that is, if he remembered it for a certain length of time (e.g. about a day), then he would remember it for the relative “long haul.”
Example Question #1743 : Ap Psychology
Abraham Maslow is best known for developing which of the following theories?
Hierarchy of needs
Operant conditioning
Attachment theory
Universal archetypes
Hierarchy of needs
Maslow was responsible for the Maslow hierarchy of needs: an ordering of human needs from most pressing to least pressing, often presented as a pyramid. According to Maslow, needs can be grouped into the following categories, from lowest to highest: physiological needs; safety and security; love and belongingness; self-worth and self-esteem; and self-actualization (sometimes subdivided into knowledge and understanding, aesthetic needs, and then self-actualization). The idea is that an individual will focus on filling simpler, more “primitive” needs before moving onto the more abstract human need for growth and development. Physiological needs are things like food, shelter, and water. Safety and security refers to achieving a secure, low fear state in which one feels physically, financially, and emotionally safe and stable. Love and belongingness needs are next, and they are described as the human need for companionship and social relationships. The self-worth and self-esteem tier consists of people’s needs for positive feelings about themselves and their positions in society; it is essentially the desire to be valued as a contributing member of one’s community. Self-actualization is a somewhat abstract concept which is best summarized as “being the absolute best you can be." Maslow thought very few, if any, people ever actually achieved self-actualization. As for the other answer choices, Mary Ainsworth was responsible for attachment theory in small children; Carl Jung, for the concept of archetypes; B. F. Skinner, for operant conditioning.
Example Question #1742 : Ap Psychology
Which of the following psychologists is known for pioneering research associated with measuring intelligence?
Sigmund Freud
Alfred Binet
Stanley Milgram
Carl Jung
William James
Alfred Binet
"Alfred Binet" created the first practical intelligence test by assessing the diverse abilities of Parisian schoolchildren in the 19th century. Even in modern times, his work is still influential. For example, the Stanford-Binet intelligence measure is one of the most popular cognitive tests that is still used today.