AP®︎ Psychology: Unit 3 Practice Test
Prepare for your quiz, test, or the AP exam with focused practice questions on Unit 3 of AP Psychology – Development and Learning.
Questions List
Unit 3 (All Topics)
Question 1 Topic 3.1Easy
This question tests the following: 3.1.A
What is one focus of developmental psychology?
What You’re Being Tested On:
Explore the learning objectives taken directly from the College Board’s AP® Psychology Curriculum. Ensure you’re prepared for the exact topics covered on the AP® exam, in-class tests, and quizzes, and gain confidence in your mastery of the material.
Unit 3: Development and Learning
This unit covers physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development across the lifespan. It also explores how we learn through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning.
Topic 3.1: Themes and Methods in Developmental Psychology
Learning Objective: 3.1.A
Explain how enduring themes inform developmental psychology.
Essential Knowledge: 3.1.A.1
Developmental psychology is concerned with both chronological order of development and/ or thematic issues in development across the lifespan. Thematic issues of interest to developmental psychologists include stability and change, nature and nurture, and continuous and discontinuous stages of development.
Learning Objective: 3.1.B
Describe ways cross- sectional and longitudinal research design methods used in developmental psychology inform understanding about behavior and mental processes.
Topic 3.2: Physical Development Across the Lifespan
Learning Objective: 3.2.A
Explain how physical development before birth applies to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.2.A.1
Teratogens, maternal illness, genetic mutations, hormonal, and environmental factors can influence the major physical and psychological milestones that occur during prenatal development. Exclusion Statement: The stages of prenatal development (zygote, embryo, and fetus) are outside the scope of the AP Psychology Exam.
Learning Objective: 3.2.B
Explain how physical development in infancy and childhood apply to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.2.B.1
Physical development in infancy and childhood happens in generally the same order, but the timing of the development can vary. The development of fine and gross motor coordination is among the major physical and psychological milestones that define infancy and childhood. These physical skills develop as children mature, allowing children to develop critical skills needed to become more independent.
Essential Knowledge: 3.2.B.2
Infants possess reflexes, like the rooting reflex, that indicate on-track physical and psychological milestone development.
Essential Knowledge: 3.2.B.3
Research using the visual cliff apparatus demonstrates an early ability in infants to perceive depth and an innovative way to assess infant responses.
Essential Knowledge: 3.2.B.4
Research suggests that critical or sensitive periods in infancy and childhood have strong developmental effects, especially for skills such as language. Some non-human animals will imprint on the first object they encounter as a means of survival.
Learning Objective: 3.2.C
Explain how physical development in adolescence applies to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.2.C.1
The main physical and psychological milestones that occur in adolescence are the adolescent growth spurt and puberty, in which reproductive ability develops. Adolescents develop primary and secondary sex characteristics during this time, such as menarche and spermarche.
Learning Objective: 3.2.D
Explain how physical development in adulthood applies to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.2.D.1
Adulthood spans most of the lifespan and is characterized by a general leveling off and then a varying decline in reproductive ability (i.e., menopause), mobility, flexibility, reaction time, and visual and auditory sensory acuity.
Topic 3.3: Gender and Sexual Orientation
Learning Objective: 3.3.A
Describe how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development.
Topic 3.4: Cognitive Development Across the Lifespan
Learning Objective: 3.4.A
Explain how theories of cognitive development apply to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.4.A.1
According to Piaget, children develop schemas via continuous and discontinuous processes such as assimilation and accommodation.
Essential Knowledge: 3.4.A.1.i
The sensorimotor stage occurs from infancy through toddlerhood. Object permanence develops during this stage.
Essential Knowledge: 3.4.A.1.ii
The preoperational stage occurs from toddlerhood through early childhood. Children become proficient in using mental symbols and engage in pretend play. The preoperational stage is identified more by cognitive tasks children cannot perform such as conservation and reversibility, or by those they exhibit, such as animism and egocentrism. Children begin to develop a theory of mind during this stage.
Essential Knowledge: 3.4.A.1.iii
The concrete operational stage occurs from early through late childhood. Children in this stage can generally correct the cognitive errors made in the preoperational stage and understand the world in logical, realistic, and straightforward ways, but struggle to think systematically.
Essential Knowledge: 3.4.A.1.iv
The formal operational stage occurs from late childhood through adulthood. People in this stage gain the ability to think abstractly and hypothetically. Piaget proposed that not all people achieve formal operational thinking.
Essential Knowledge: 3.4.A.2
According to Vygotsky, children are social learners who learn through interacting with and scaffolding by other people within sociocultural contexts. Ideally, learning occurs while the person is in their zone of proximal development.
Essential Knowledge: 3.4.A.3
Adults experience changes in cognitive capabilities as they progress through the lifespan. Crystallized intelligence remains relatively stable through adulthood while fluid intelligence tends to wane as people age. Cognitive disorders that affect adults include dementia.
Topic 3.5: Communication and Language Development
Learning Objective: 3.5.A
Explain how key components of language and communication apply to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.5.A.1
Language is a shared (mutually agreed upon) system of arbitrary symbols (often expressed as and combined into phonemes, morphemes, and semantics) that are rule-governed (via grammar and syntax) and generative to produce an infinity of ideas. Exclusion Statement: Pragmatics of language are outside the scope of the AP Psychology Exam.
Learning Objective: 3.5.B
Explain how language develops in humans.
Essential Knowledge: 3.5.B.1
In language development across all cultures, people use nonverbal manual gestures (e.g., pointing) to communicate and develop formal language through specific stages (cooing, babbling, one-word stage, and telegraphic speech). People learning a language often make errors such as overgeneralization of language rules as they learn.
Topic 3.6: Social-Emotional Development Across the Lifespan
Learning Objective: 3.6.A
Explain how social development relates to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.1
The ecological systems theory explores how the social environment influences development. The five systems in this theory are as follows: Microsystem (groups that have direct contact with the individual) Mesosystem (the relationships between groups in the microsystem) Exosystem (indirect factors in an individual’s life) Macrosystem (cultural events that affect the individuals and others around them) Chronosystem (the individual’s current stage of life).
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.2
Research has identified different parenting styles of caregivers, including authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. Cultural differences exist in the ways these parenting styles affect outcomes in caregivers and children.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.3
Research has identified different attachment styles demonstrated by infants and children, which vary by culture. The types of attachment infants and children display include secure and insecure (avoidant, anxious, and disorganized). Temperament is related to how children attach to caregivers.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.3.i
Separation anxiety occurs when children express heightened anxiety or fear when away from a caregiver or in the presence of a stranger.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.3.ii
Studies with monkeys demonstrate the importance of comfort over food in attachment.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.4
Developmental psychologists study how peer relationships develop over time.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.4.i
Children engage with peers via play (parallel and pretend).
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.4.ii
Adolescents gradually rely more on peer relationships as they age. As adolescents interact with peers, they demonstrate a type of egocentrism that is often demonstrated via the imaginary audience and the personal fable.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.5
Developmental psychologists study how adults develop socially over time.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.5.i
Culture plays a role in determining when adulthood begins and when major life events occur (social clock). Some cultures allow for a time of emerging adulthood as a transition from adolescence to adulthood.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.5.ii
Relationships with other adults result in adults forming families or family-like relationships that should provide mutual support and care. Childhood attachment styles can affect how adults form attachments to other adults.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.6
The stage theory of psychosocial development, which was a reconceptualization of the psychosexual theory, proposes that people must resolve psychosocial conflicts at each stage of the lifespan. The stages are as follows: Trust and mistrust Autonomy and shame and doubt Initiative and guilt Industry and inferiority Identity and role confusion Intimacy and isolation Generativity and stagnation Integrity and despair Exclusion Statement: The psychosexual stage theory of development is outside of the scope of the AP Psychology Exam.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.7
The experience of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) has effects on relationships people form throughout the lifespan. Sociocultural differences exist in what is considered an ACE and how ACEs affect outcomes people may experience.
Essential Knowledge: 3.6.A.8
Adolescents develop a sense of identity for who they will be as an adult through the processes of achievement, diffusion, foreclosure, and moratorium. Identity development also includes processes for developing identities such as racial/ethnic identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious identity, occupational identity, and familial identity, often through considering possible selves.
Topic 3.7: Classical Conditioning
Learning Objective: 3.7.A
Explain how classical conditioning applies to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.7.A.1
The behavioral perspective evolved from theories about learning via conditioning. Behaviorists have traditionally focused on observable behavior to the exclusion of mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.7.A.2
Classical conditioning focuses on the association of one stimulus with another stimulus to elicit a response. Learning the association (also known as acquisition) involves a series of steps that demonstrate principles of associative learning.
Essential Knowledge: 3.7.A.2.i
The unconditioned stimulus (UCS) elicits an unconditioned response (UCR). This response becomes the conditioned response (CR) when it is performed in response to the conditioned stimulus (CS).
Essential Knowledge: 3.7.A.2.ii
The order of presentation of the CS with the UCS is important to successful acquisition.
Essential Knowledge: 3.7.A.2.iii
A CR can become extinct when the CS is no longer paired with the UCS. A formerly extinct CR can be spontaneously recovered when the CS is again presented after extinction.
Essential Knowledge: 3.7.A.2.iv
Stimulus discrimination and generalization have been demonstrated in studies of classical conditioning.
Essential Knowledge: 3.7.A.2.v
A CS can be used as a UCS in higher-order conditioning. Exclusion Statement: Delayed conditioning, trace conditioning, simultaneous conditioning, and backward conditioning are outside the scope of the AP Psychology Exam.
Essential Knowledge: 3.7.A.3
Research has demonstrated that emotional responses can be classically conditioned. These findings form the basis of therapeutic interventions for many mental disorders, such as counterconditioning. Exclusion Statement: The expectancy theory is outside the scope of the AP Psychology Exam.
Essential Knowledge: 3.7.A.4
Research on taste aversions, which are acquired through classical conditioning, demonstrates one-trial conditioning and biological preparedness. One-trial learning occurs when the association is acquired through one pairing of the stimulus and response and is not strengthened by further pairings. Biological preparedness refers to how animals are biologically predisposed to learning certain stimulus-response pairings more quickly than others.
Essential Knowledge: 3.7.A.5
Habituation occurs when organisms grow accustomed to and exhibit a diminished response to a repeated or enduring stimulus.
Topic 3.8: Operant Conditioning
Learning Objective: 3.8.A
Explain how operant conditioning applies to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.8.A.1
Operant conditioning focuses on associating consequences (reinforcement and punishment) with behaviors. The Law of Effect states that behaviors with reinforcing consequences are more likely to be repeated while behaviors with punishing consequences are not as likely to be repeated.
Essential Knowledge: 3.8.A.2
Reinforcement and punishment can be positive or negative. Reinforcers can be primary or secondary. Reinforcement discrimination and generalization have been demonstrated in studies of operant conditioning.
Essential Knowledge: 3.8.A.3
Reinforcement can be used to shape behavior (“shaping”) gradually through rewarding successive approximations of the desired behavior. Research with animals shows that only certain behaviors can be shaped through reinforcement (known as instinctive drift).
Essential Knowledge: 3.8.A.4
Superstitious behavior occurs when consequences reinforce unrelated behaviors. Learned helplessness occurs when organisms learn that they have no control over their experience of aversive consequences in a given situation.
Essential Knowledge: 3.8.A.5
The schedule with which reinforcement is delivered can determine the strength of the association between the consequence and the response. The two main types of reinforcement schedules are continuous and partial. Each type of reinforcement behavior can be graphed, resulting in a distinctive pattern on the graph (e.g., fixed-interval schedule produces a scalloped graph).
Essential Knowledge: 3.8.A.5.i
Continuous reinforcement schedules deliver reinforcement for each and every correct behavior.
Essential Knowledge: 3.8.A.5.ii
The partial reinforcement schedules focus on whether reinforcement is delivered on a time-based schedule (fixed- or variable- interval) or for the number of behaviors performed (fixed- or variable-ratio).
Topic 3.9: Social, Cognitive, and Neurological Factors in Learning
Learning Objective: 3.9.A
Explain how social learning applies to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.9.A.1
Social learning theory proposes that learning can occur by observation and does not have to involve personal experience with a consequence (vicarious conditioning). Learning can occur by copying the behavior of models. The more similar a model is, the more likely the behavior is to be learned.
Learning Objective: 3.9.B
Explain how cognitive factors in learning apply to behavior and mental processes.
Essential Knowledge: 3.9.B.1
Insight learning occurs when the solution to a problem occurs without any association, consequence, or model being present.
Essential Knowledge: 3.9.B.2
Latent learning occurs when information is learned without reinforcement but is not immediately evident. Latent learning is often demonstrated by cognitive maps.
