AP Psychology AP Psychology Practice Test 2025
This is the official AP Psychology AP Psychology question paper for 2025, as set in the Model questions examination. It carries 100 full marks and a time allowance of 120 minutes, across 10 questions. On Kekkei you can attempt this AP Psychology past paper online with a timer, get instant AI feedback and step-by-step solutions, and track the topics where you lose marks — completely free. Whether you are revising for your AP Psychology AP Psychology exam or solving previous years' question papers, this 2025 paper is a great way to practise under real exam conditions.
| Level | AP Psychology |
|---|---|
| Subject | AP Psychology |
| Year | 2025 BS |
| Exam session | Model questions |
| Full marks | 100 |
| Time allowed | 120 minutes |
| Questions | 10, all with step-by-step solutions |
Multiple Choice
Select the best answer.
A patient with damage to Broca's area (left frontal lobe) would most likely exhibit which of the following symptoms?
Difficulty producing fluent speech while retaining the ability to comprehend language, often speaking in short, effortful phrases with intact meaning
Broca's area is primarily responsible for speech production. Damage causes Broca's aphasia: patients understand what is said but struggle to produce fluent speech. Their output is typically telegraphic but meaningful. This contrasts with Wernicke's aphasia, in which speech is fluent but nonsensical.
The Gestalt principle of closure refers to the perceptual tendency to:
Perceive incomplete figures as complete wholes by mentally filling in missing information, reflecting the brain's preference for organized, meaningful patterns
Closure describes how our visual system automatically fills in gaps to perceive complete shapes. This illustrates that the brain actively constructs meaningful patterns from incomplete sensory data rather than passively recording what is presented.
In Pavlov's classical conditioning experiments, after repeatedly pairing a bell with food, the bell alone eventually elicited salivation. If the bell is then presented repeatedly without food, the salivation response gradually diminishes. This process is called:
Extinction
Extinction occurs when the conditioned stimulus is presented without the unconditioned stimulus, causing the conditioned response to weaken. Importantly, extinction suppresses rather than erases the association, as demonstrated by spontaneous recovery—the reappearance of the response after a rest period.
The misinformation effect, demonstrated in Elizabeth Loftus's research, occurs when:
Post-event information (such as leading questions or misleading details) alters a person's memory of the original event, demonstrating that memory is reconstructive rather than a faithful recording
Loftus showed that participants asked about cars "smashing" estimated higher speeds and were more likely to "remember" broken glass (which was not present) than those asked about cars "hitting." This has profound implications for eyewitness testimony reliability.
According to Piaget's theory of cognitive development, a child who understands that pouring water from a short, wide glass into a tall, narrow glass does not change the amount of water has achieved:
Conservation, a hallmark of the concrete operational stage (approximately ages 7-11), indicating the ability to understand that certain properties remain the same despite changes in appearance
Conservation is a key achievement of the concrete operational stage. Before this stage, children are deceived by perceptual appearances: they believe the taller glass contains more water. Achieving conservation requires mentally reversing operations and considering multiple dimensions simultaneously.
According to the DSM-5, Major Depressive Disorder requires five or more symptoms during the same two-week period, with at least one being depressed mood or anhedonia. Which of the following is NOT a diagnostic criterion for MDD?
Auditory hallucinations commanding the person to perform specific actions
Command auditory hallucinations are characteristic of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, not Major Depressive Disorder. MDD criteria include depressed mood, anhedonia, appetite changes, sleep disturbances, psychomotor changes, fatigue, worthlessness, concentration difficulties, and suicidal ideation.
Solomon Asch's conformity experiments (1951) demonstrated that participants would give obviously incorrect answers about line lengths when confederates unanimously gave wrong answers. This finding is best explained by:
Normative social influence—the desire to be accepted by the group led participants to conform publicly even when they privately knew the correct answer, illustrating the power of social pressure
Approximately 75% of participants conformed at least once. Post-experiment interviews revealed that most knew the correct answer but went along with the group to avoid social rejection (normative influence), highlighting the remarkable power of group pressure even in unambiguous situations.
The hippocampus plays a critical role in which of the following cognitive processes?
The formation and consolidation of new explicit (declarative) memories, as demonstrated by the case of patient H.M., who could not form new long-term memories after bilateral hippocampal removal
Henry Molaison (H.M.) could not form new episodic or semantic memories after surgery but retained procedural memory and pre-surgical memories, demonstrating that the hippocampus is critical for new memory formation but not for storage of already-consolidated memories.
Erik Erikson's psychosocial theory proposes that adolescents (ages 12-18) face which primary developmental crisis?
Identity vs. Role Confusion, in which the central task is to develop a coherent sense of self, including personal values, beliefs, and goals, through exploration of different roles and ideologies
Erikson proposed that adolescents must integrate childhood experiences, biological changes, and social expectations into a coherent identity. Successful resolution produces a stable sense of self; failure results in role confusion. The identity formed during adolescence shapes all subsequent psychosocial development.
In operant conditioning, a variable-ratio reinforcement schedule (such as slot machines) produces which pattern of behavior?
High, steady rates of responding that are highly resistant to extinction, because the unpredictability of reinforcement maintains motivation and prevents the organism from detecting when reinforcement has stopped
Variable-ratio schedules produce the highest and most consistent response rates of all reinforcement schedules and make behavior extremely resistant to extinction. The organism can never be sure the next response won't be reinforced. This is why gambling can be so addictive.
Frequently asked questions
- Where can I find the AP Psychology AP Psychology question paper 2025?
- The full AP Psychology AP Psychology 2025 (Model questions) question paper is available free on Kekkei. You can read every question online and attempt the paper under timed exam conditions.
- Does the AP Psychology 2025 paper come with solutions?
- Yes. Every question on this AP Psychology past paper includes a step-by-step solution, plus instant AI feedback when you attempt it on Kekkei.
- How many marks is the AP Psychology AP Psychology 2025 paper?
- The AP Psychology AP Psychology 2025 paper carries 100 full marks and is meant to be completed in 120 minutes, across 10 questions.
- Is practising this AP Psychology past paper free?
- Yes — reading and attempting this AP Psychology past paper on Kekkei is completely free.