AP Psychology Practice Test
This is a free 15-question sampler in the style of the AP Psychology exam. It covers the biological bases of behavior, sensation and perception, learning, memory, development, motivation and emotion, personality, psychological disorders, social psychology and research methods, mixing multiple choice, select all that apply and fill in the blank. Answer all 15 questions, then check your score and read the explanation for every question.
Which neurotransmitter is most directly linked to the loss of motor control in Parkinson's disease?
All High School & Admission quizzes
- Practice test · 15 questions
PSAT Practice Test
- Practice test · 15 questions
ACT Practice Questions
- Practice test · 15 questions
GED Practice Test
Now make your own
Upload your prep book, slides or notes, or just tell Bo what you want to learn. You do not need a document to start.
All 15 questions at a glance
Prefer to read before you play? Every question in the sampler is listed below. Answers and explanations stay collapsed until you open them.
1. Which neurotransmitter is most directly linked to the loss of motor control in Parkinson's disease?
- A. Serotonin
- B. Dopamine
- C. GABA
- D. Acetylcholine
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Dopamine
Parkinson's disease follows the death of dopamine-producing neurons in a midbrain area called the substantia nigra, which is why tremor and slowed movement are the first signs. Dopamine also carries reward and motivation signals, so it turns up again in the units on motivation and on addiction.
2. Damage to the hippocampus would most likely impair:
- A. Forming new long-term memories
- B. Regulating body temperature and hunger
- C. Coordinating balance and fine motor movement
- D. Producing fluent speech
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Forming new long-term memories
The hippocampus consolidates new explicit memories so they can be stored long term, which is why a patient with hippocampal damage can describe their childhood in detail but cannot remember what happened this morning. The other three jobs belong elsewhere: the hypothalamus handles hunger and temperature, the cerebellum handles balance and coordination, and Broca's area handles speech production.
3. Complete the sentence.
The fatty layer that wraps many axons and speeds up the neural impulse is called the _____.
Options for blank 1: dendrite, myelin sheath, synaptic vesicle, terminal button
Show answer and explanation
Answer: myelin sheath
Myelin insulates the axon so the impulse jumps from gap to gap instead of crawling along the whole length, which makes conduction far faster. When myelin breaks down, as it does in multiple sclerosis, the signal slows or misfires and movement and sensation suffer.
4. Which receptor cells in the retina give you color vision and fine detail in bright light?
- A. Rods
- B. Cones
- C. Bipolar cells
- D. Ganglion cells
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Cones
Cones are packed most densely in the fovea at the center of the retina and they need good light to fire, so they carry color and sharp detail during the day. Rods greatly outnumber them and handle dim light and peripheral vision, but they do not code color, which is why colors drain away at night.
5. In Pavlov's classic study, a tone was paired with meat powder until the tone alone made the dog salivate. Which statements about that study are correct?
Select all that apply.
- A. The meat powder was the unconditioned stimulus
- B. Salivation to the tone alone was the conditioned response
- C. Before conditioning, the tone was a neutral stimulus
- D. The meat powder was the conditioned stimulus
- E. Salivation to the meat powder was the conditioned response
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. The meat powder was the unconditioned stimulus, B. Salivation to the tone alone was the conditioned response, C. Before conditioning, the tone was a neutral stimulus
Before conditioning the tone means nothing to the dog, so it is the neutral stimulus, while the meat powder is the unconditioned stimulus because it produces salivation with no learning at all. After the pairing the tone becomes the conditioned stimulus and salivation to the tone alone is the conditioned response.
6. A student takes an aspirin, the headache goes away, and the student now reaches for aspirin as soon as a headache starts. This is an example of:
- A. Positive reinforcement
- B. Negative reinforcement
- C. Positive punishment
- D. Negative punishment
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Negative reinforcement
Reinforcement always makes a behavior more likely, and negative means something unpleasant was taken away, here the pain. Punishment would make the behavior less likely, so neither punishment option can fit a behavior that is now happening more often.
7. Complete the sentence.
A slot machine pays out after an unpredictable number of pulls, which makes it a _____ schedule of reinforcement.
Options for blank 1: fixed-ratio, variable-ratio, fixed-interval, variable-interval
Show answer and explanation
Answer: variable-ratio
Ratio schedules count responses and interval schedules count time, and variable means the requirement changes from one payout to the next. Skinner found that variable-ratio produces the highest and steadiest response rate and resists extinction the longest, which is exactly why gambling is so hard to stop.
8. Remembering the digits 1 4 9 2 1 7 7 6 as the two dates 1492 and 1776 is an example of:
- A. Chunking
- B. Priming
- C. The spacing effect
- D. Proactive interference
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Chunking
Chunking groups separate items into larger meaningful units, so eight loose digits take up two slots in working memory instead of eight. Working memory holds only about seven items at once, so the gain does not come from more storage, it comes from packaging the items with knowledge you already hold in long-term memory.
9. A child sees water poured from a short wide glass into a tall thin glass and says the amount of water has not changed. According to Piaget, the child has reached the:
- A. Sensorimotor stage
- B. Preoperational stage
- C. Concrete operational stage
- D. Formal operational stage
Show answer and explanation
Answer: C. Concrete operational stage
Conservation, the understanding that quantity stays the same when shape changes, marks Piaget's concrete operational stage, roughly ages 7 to 11. A preoperational child centers on one feature, usually height, and insists the tall thin glass now holds more water.
10. In Ainsworth's Strange Situation, which behaviors describe a securely attached infant?
Select all that apply.
- A. Uses the caregiver as a base and explores the room freely
- B. Shows distress when the caregiver leaves
- C. Is comforted quickly on reunion and goes back to playing
- D. Ignores the caregiver on return and keeps playing alone
- E. Seeks contact and pushes the caregiver away at the same time
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. Uses the caregiver as a base and explores the room freely, B. Shows distress when the caregiver leaves, C. Is comforted quickly on reunion and goes back to playing
Secure attachment shows up as a balance: the infant explores while the caregiver is present, protests the separation, and settles quickly once the caregiver is back. Avoidant infants show little reaction in either direction, and resistant infants want contact and resist it at the same moment.
11. Which theory of emotion says the physical arousal and the felt emotion occur at the same time, triggered together by the thalamus?
- A. James-Lange theory
- B. Cannon-Bard theory
- C. Schachter-Singer two-factor theory
- D. The Yerkes-Dodson law
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Cannon-Bard theory
Cannon-Bard holds that the thalamus signals the cortex and the body at the same moment, so the racing heart and the feeling of fear arrive together rather than one causing the other. James-Lange puts the body first, saying you feel afraid because you notice yourself trembling, and Schachter-Singer says arousal needs a cognitive label before it becomes a specific emotion.
12. In the Big Five model of personality, which trait describes how organized, disciplined and goal-directed a person is?
- A. Openness to experience
- B. Conscientiousness
- C. Extraversion
- D. Agreeableness
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. Conscientiousness
Conscientiousness covers planning, self-discipline and follow-through, and it is the Big Five trait that best predicts performance at school and at work. The full set is openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, usually remembered with the letters OCEAN.
13. Complete the sentence.
A person cannot stop thinking about germs and washes their hands dozens of times a day to bring the anxiety down. This pattern fits _____.
Options for blank 1: generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, a specific phobia
Show answer and explanation
Answer: obsessive-compulsive disorder
The unwanted repeating thoughts are the obsessions and the repeated washing is the compulsion, a ritual carried out to lower the distress the thought creates. Generalized anxiety disorder is broad worry with no ritual attached, and panic disorder centers on sudden attacks of intense physical fear.
14. Which of these statements about classic social psychology findings are correct?
Select all that apply.
- A. In Milgram's obedience study, a majority of participants continued to the highest shock level when an authority figure kept telling them to go on
- B. In Asch's line studies, many participants gave an answer they could see was wrong in order to match the group
- C. The bystander effect says a person becomes less likely to help as the number of other bystanders grows
- D. The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to overweight the situation and underweight personality when judging someone else
- E. Groupthink improves a group's decisions by pushing it to consider more options
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A. In Milgram's obedience study, a majority of participants continued to the highest shock level when an authority figure kept telling them to go on, B. In Asch's line studies, many participants gave an answer they could see was wrong in order to match the group, C. The bystander effect says a person becomes less likely to help as the number of other bystanders grows
Milgram and Asch both showed that ordinary people bend to an authority or to a group far more than they predict they would, and Darley and Latane showed that responsibility gets diluted as more onlookers watch. The last two statements are reversals: the fundamental attribution error means overweighting personality and underweighting the situation, and groupthink makes decisions worse by suppressing dissent.
15. A researcher tests whether a new study app raises quiz scores. Students are randomly assigned either to use the app or to study as usual, and both groups then take the same quiz. What is the dependent variable?
- A. Whether a student used the app
- B. The score on the quiz
- C. The random assignment to groups
- D. The number of students in each group
Show answer and explanation
Answer: B. The score on the quiz
The dependent variable is the outcome the researcher measures, here the quiz score, while the independent variable is what the researcher manipulates, here app or no app. Random assignment is neither variable: it is the procedure that spreads pre-existing differences evenly across the groups so the two start out comparable.
What's actually on the AP Psychology exam
The AP Psychology exam is scored 1 to 5 and runs a little over two and a half hours. Since the College Board rebuilt the course for the 2024-25 school year, Section I is 75 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes and counts for two thirds of the score, and Section II is two free-response questions in 70 minutes and counts for the other third. Those two free-response questions have names worth knowing. The Article Analysis Question hands you a short write-up of a study and asks you to name the research method, work with the variables and say what the results do and do not support. The Evidence-Based Question gives you two sources and asks you to argue a position using both of them.
The course is organized into five units, and each one is weighted at 15 to 25 percent of the exam, so no single unit decides your score. They are biological bases of behavior, cognition, development and learning, social psychology and personality, and mental and physical health. In practice that means you cannot skip a unit and make it up elsewhere, and it also means the exam rewards broad coverage over deep mastery of one favorite topic.
Two things vary and are worth checking yourself rather than trusting a forum post. The College Board revises the Course and Exam Description, so confirm the current question counts and timing there instead of in an old review book. And the score a college accepts for credit is set by the college, not by the College Board: many take a 3, plenty require a 4 or a 5, and some give no credit for AP Psychology at all. Look up the policy at the schools you actually care about before you decide how hard to push for a 5.
How to use this sampler
These 15 questions spread across the same content the course covers: neurons and brain structures, sensation and perception, classical and operant conditioning, memory, development, emotion, personality, psychological disorders, social psychology and research methods. One difference is worth flagging. The real exam's multiple choice asks for a single answer per question, while this sampler also uses select all that apply and fill in the blank. Those formats are here on purpose, because they make you recall the term instead of recognizing it in a list, which is a harder and more useful check.
Take it in one sitting without notes, at roughly a minute per question, then read the explanation for every question, including the ones you got right. A wrong answer points at a unit, not just at a fact. If you missed the reinforcement schedule question and the negative reinforcement question, review operant conditioning as a whole rather than memorizing those two answers.
Nothing here practices the free-response section, which is a third of your score. Study for that differently: read a short research summary, name the method and the variables out loud, then write a claim and back it with specific evidence from the text. Vocabulary and researcher names carry you through the multiple choice, but the free response asks you to apply a concept to a scenario you have never seen, which is a separate skill.
How StudyPDF builds full practice tests from your own materials
Fifteen questions can show you which units are shaky. They cannot get you ready on their own, and generic question banks tend to ignore what your teacher spent three weeks on.
StudyPDF works from your material instead. You upload your textbook chapter, class notes or the review slides your teacher posted, and Bo, the study agent, builds full-length practice tests from those exact pages. Every question is grounded in your material, and every explanation cites where the answer comes from, so you can check the source when something looks off. You can regenerate fresh tests as often as you want, narrow them to a single unit like development and learning, and track which concepts you keep missing.
You do not have to upload anything to start. You can also just name a topic, type something like operant conditioning or AP Psychology unit 4, and Bo builds a set from there. That is the faster route when your notes are thin, when the textbook is still in your locker, or when you only want a quick drill on one idea. Starting is free.
Written by the StudyPDF team. Last updated 2026-08-19.