AP Psychology UNIT 5 Practice Test 2025 (Cognitive Psychology)

Last Updated on March 25, 2025

AP Psychology UNIT 5 Practice Test 2025 (Cognitive Psychology): The College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) exam Psychology UNIT 5 (Cognitive Psychology) Questions and Answers. Try our free AP Psychology review practice test for free.

The central question of memory research is: What causes us to remember what we remember and to forget what we forget? Researchers define memory as any indication that learning has persisted over time. You might remember the bully who pushed you into the mud in second grade but forget your appointment with the school counselor. Cognitive psychologists study cognition, all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, and remembering information.

UNIT 5 Cognitive Psychology: TOPICS

5.1 Introduction to Memory
5.2 Encoding
5.3 Storing
5.4 Retrieving
5.5 Forgetting and Memory Distortion
5.6 Biological Bases of Memory
5.7 Introduction to Thinking and Problem Solving
5.8 Biases and Errors in Thinking
5.9 Introduction to Intelligence
5.10 Psychometric Principles and Intelligence Testing
5.11 Components of Language and Language Acquisition Sensation and Perception

AP Psychology UNIT 5 Practice Test 2025

Test Name	Advanced Placement Exam
Subject	AP Psychology Practice Test 2025
Unit 5	Cognitive Psychology
Section 1	Multiple Choice Question
Total Items	30 Sample MCQs
Time Limit	35 Minutes
AP EXAM WEIGHTING	13–17%

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AP Psychology UNIT 5 Practice Test

AP Psychology Practice Test
UNIT 5: Cognitive Psychology
Total MCQs: 30
Time Limit: 35 Minutes

1 / 30

Which of the following exemplifies retroactive interference?

(A) After suffering a blow to the head, Jean cannot form new memories.

(B) Elle failed a Spanish test because she studied for her Italian test after studying Spanish.

(D) Gene cannot remember his new locker combination but remembers last year’s.

(E) Jodi remembers the first few items on her school supply list, but can’t remember the rest of them.

2 / 30

Which of the following is a holophrase 1-year-old Amanda is likely to say?

(A) “Mmmmm”

(B) “Gaga”

(D) “I eated the cookie”

(E) “Bottle”

3 / 30

Having been told that Syd is an engineer and Fran is an elementary school teacher, when Arnold meets the couple for the first time, he assumes that Syd is the husband and Fran is the wife, rather than the opposite, which is the case. This best illustrates

(A) confirmation bias

(B) cognitive illusion

(D) the anchoring effect

(E) the representativeness heuristic

4 / 30

Which of the following is a good example of functional fixedness?

(A) failing to use a dime as a screwdriver when you have lost your screwdriver

(B) not being able to solve a physics problem because you apply the same rule you always do

(D) adding water to a cake mix when it calls for milk

(E) thinking of an apple first when you are asked to name fruits

5 / 30

Unlike B. F. Skinner, Noam Chomsky believes that children

(A) learn to speak by mimicking the sounds around them

(B) speak more quickly if their parents correct their mispronunciations early

(D) learn language more quickly if positive rewards are given to them

(E) can learn to speak correctly only during a critical age

6 / 30

Compared to convergent thinkers, to solve a problem, divergent thinkers are more likely to

(A) process information to arrive at the single best answer

(B) think creatively and generate multiple answers

(D) frequently suffer from functional fixedness

(E) use algorithms rather than heuristics to arrive at a solution

7 / 30

Because it has all of the features commonly associated with the concept bird, a robin is considered

(A) a prototype

(B) a schematic

(D) a phenotype

(E) a heuristic

8 / 30

Phonemes are

(A) the rules of grammar that dictate letter combinations in a language

(B) the smallest unit of sound in a language

(D) semantically the same as morphemes

(E) about 100 different words that are common to all languages

9 / 30

Dai was drunk, so his girlfriend convinced him to get out of his car, and she drove him home in her car. He could not remember where his car was parked when he got up the next morning, but after drinking some liquor, Dai remembered where he left his car. This phenomenon best illustrates

(A) the misinformation effect

(B) mood-congruent memory

(D) state-dependent memory

(E) anterograde amnesia

10 / 30

Which of the following brain structures plays a key role in transferring information from short-term memory to long-term memory?

(A) hypothalamus

(B) thalamus

(D) frontal lobe

(E) parietal lobe

11 / 30

According to the levels of processing theory of memory,

(A) we remember items that are repeated again and again

(B) maintenance rehearsal will encode items into our long-term memory

(D) input, output, and storage are the three levels

(E) we can only hold seven items in our short-term memory store before it is full

12 / 30

In the preceding example, which of the items would be recalled in Doug’s short-term memory immediately after writing the list?

(A) peas, corn, squash

(B) peas, corn, onions

(D) flour, milk, eggs

(E) flour, corn, bananas

13 / 30

Doug wrote a grocery list of 10 items, but leaves it at home. The list included in order: peas, corn, squash, onions, apples, pears, bananas, flour, milk, and eggs. If the law of primacy holds, which of the following is Doug most likely to remember when he gets to the store?

(A) peas, pears, eggs

(B) banana, flour, peas

(D) flour, milk, eggs

(E) peas, corn, onions

14 / 30

Which of the following examples best illustrates episodic memory?

(A) telling someone how to tie a shoe

(B) answering correctly that the Battle of Hastings was in 1066

(D) remembering that a clown was at your fifth birthday party

(E) long-term memory for the times tables learned in second grade

15 / 30

The three stages of the Atkinson-Shiffrin process of memory are

(A) iconic, echoic, encoding

(B) sensory, short term, long term

(D) semantic, episodic, procedural

(E) cerebellum, temporal lobe, hippocampus

16 / 30

A friend mentions to you that she heard humans never forget anything; we remember everything that ever happens to us. What concept from memory research most directly contradicts this belief?

(A) sensory memory

(B) selective attention

(D) constructive memory

(E) recovered memory

17 / 30

Which of the following would be the best piece of evidence for the nativist theory of language acquisition?

(A) a child who acquires language at an extremely early age through intense instruction by her or his parents

(B) statistical evidence that children in one culture learn language faster than children in another culture

(D) a child skipping the babbling and telegraphic speech stages of language acquisition

(E) a child deprived of language at an early age successfully learning language later

18 / 30

Recall is a more difficult process than recognition because

(A) memories retrieved by recognition are held in working memory, and recalled memories are in long-term memory

(B) memories retrieved by recognition are more deeply processed.

(D) memories retrieved by recognition are more recent than memories retrieved by recall.

(E) the process of recognition involves matching a person, event, or object with something already in memory.

19 / 30

Which sentence most accurately describes sensory memory?

(A) Sensory memory stores all sensory input perfectly accurately for a short period of time.

(B) Sensory memory encodes only sensations we are attending to at the time.

(D) Sensory memory records all incoming sensations and remembers them indefinitely.

(E) Sensory memory records some sensations accurately, but some are recorded incorrectly, leading to constructive memory

20 / 30

Which of the following is the best example of the use of the availability heuristic?

(A) judging a situation by a rule that is usually, but not always, true

(B) making a judgment according to past experiences that are most easily recalled

(D) making a judgment according to what is usually true in your experience

(E) solving a problem by breaking it into more easily available parts

21 / 30

According to the three-box/information-processing model, stimuli from our outside environment is first stored in

(A) working memory.

(B) the hippocampus.

(D) sensory memory.

(E) selective attention.

22 / 30

According to the nativist theory, language is acquired

(A) by parents reinforcing correct language use.

(B) using an inborn ability to learn language at a certain developmental stage.

(D) only if formal language instruction is provided in the child’s native language.

(E) best through the phonics instructional method, because children retain how to pronounce all the phonemes required for the language.

23 / 30

One of the ways memories are physically stored in the brain is by what process?

(A) deep processing, which increases levels of neurotransmitters in the hippocampus

(B) encoding, which stimulates electric activity in the hippocampus

(D) selective attention, which increases myelination of memory neurons

(E) rehearsal, which causes the brain to devote more neurons to what is being rehearsed

24 / 30

Which of the following is an effective method for testing whether a memory is actually true or whether it is a constructed memory?

(A) checking to see whether it was deeply processed or shallowly processed

(B) testing to see if the memory was encoded from sensory memory into working memory

(D) using other evidence, such as written records, to substantiate the memory

(E) there is no way to tell the difference between a true memory and a constructed one

25 / 30

Which of the following is the most complete list of elements in the three-box/information-processing model?

(A) sensory memory, constructive memory, working memory, and long- term memory

(B) short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory

(D) sensory memory, encoding, working memory, and retrieval

(E) sensory memory, working memory, encoding, long-term memory, and retrieval

26 / 30

Which of the following is an example of the use of the representativeness heuristic?

(A) Judging that a young person is more likely to be the instigator of an argument than an older person, because you believe younger people are more likely to start fights.

(B) Breaking a math story problem down into smaller, representative parts, in order to solve it.

(D) Solving a problem with a rule that guarantees the right, more representative, answer.

(E) Making a judgment according to past experiences that are most easily recalled, therefore representative of experience.

27 / 30

Contrary to what Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis originally predicted, what effect does recent research indicate language has on the way we think?

(A) Since we think in language, the language we understand limits what we have the ability to think about.

(B) Language is a tool of thought but does not limit our cognition.

(D) The words in each language affect our ability to think because we are restricted to the words each language uses.

(E) The linguistic relativity hypothesis predicts that how quickly we acquire language correlates with our cognitive ability.

28 / 30

Which example would be better explained by the levels of processing model than the information-processing model?

(A) Someone says your name across the room and you switch your attention away from the conversation you are having.

(B) You forget part of a list you were trying to memorize for a test.

(D) You are able to remember verbatim a riddle you worked on for a few days before you figured out the answer.

(E) You pay less attention to the smell of your neighbor’s cologne than to the professor’s lecture in your college class.

29 / 30

Phonemes and morphemes refer to

(A) elements of telegraphic speech toddlers use.

(B) elements of language.

(D) basic elements of memories stored in long-term memory.

(E) two types of influences language has on thought according to the linguistic relativity hypothesis.

30 / 30

Mr. Krohn, a carpenter, is frustrated because he misplaced his hammer and needs to pound in the last nail in the bookcase he is building. He overlooks the fact that he could use the tennis trophy sitting above the workbench to pound in the nail. Which concept best explains why Mr. Krohn overlooked the trophy?

(A) representativeness heuristic

(B) retrieval

(D) belief bias

(E) divergent thinking

Your score is

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