AP Psychology Unit 0 - Practice Quiz

After a political election, many commentators claim it was “obvious” that the winning candidate would triumph, even though polling beforehand was nearly evenly split. Their confidence in this instance best illustrates:

• Confirmation bias

• Hindsight bias

• Illusory correlation

• Overconfidence

Liam enters a trivia contest certain he will know most of the answers because he “always does well with facts.” During the game, however, he answers only 40% correctly. Liam’s misjudgment is best explained by:

• Regression toward the mean

• Overconfidence

• Perceiving order in random events

• Sampling bias

At a casino, Clara notices the roulette wheel has landed on black six times in a row. She bets a large amount on red, convinced that red is “due to come up.” Clara’s decision specifically shows:

• Illusory correlation

• Perceiving order in random events

• Overconfidence

• Placebo effect

Dr. Alvarez submits a manuscript describing his new therapy technique to a leading psychology journal. Before it can be published, the study is sent to several independent experts who scrutinize his data and methods. This process illustrates:

• Replication

• Peer review

• Validity

• Debriefing

A developmental psychologist proposes that children exposed to multiple languages early in life develop stronger problem-solving skills. From that idea, she predicts: “Children raised in bilingual households will score higher on creative problem-solving tasks than those from monolingual households.” The developmental psychologist’s broad explanatory framework guiding her research is a:

• Hypothesis

• Theory

• Operational definition

• Confounding variable

The statement “Children raised in bilingual households will score higher on creative problem-solving tasks than those from monolingual households.” would best be described as a:

• Hypothesis

• Theory

• Independent variable

• Replication

To measure “problem-solving ability,” the researcher defines it as “the number of original solutions generated on a divergent thinking test within ten minutes.” This specification is an example of a(n):

• Validity check

• Operational definition

• Random assignment

• Independent variable

Another separate research team conducts the same study on bilingualism and creativity with different participants in another country and finds similar results. Their work strengthens the original findings through:

• Replication

• Correlation

• Debriefing

• Informed consent

A neuropsychologist follows a single patient for years after a severe brain injury, documenting changes in language and memory. Although this yields in-depth information, it is limited in generalizability. The research method used here is a:

• Survey

• Experiment

• Case study

• Naturalistic observation

While studying consumer behavior, a researcher unobtrusively records how long shoppers linger at product displays in a supermarket without interacting with them. This method is best described as:

• Naturalistic observation

• Case study

• Survey

• Experimental research