AP Psychology Unit 2 Practice Test
Twelve original multiple-choice questions on Cognition — memory, retrieval, heuristics, biases, and problem solving — with instant scoring and an explanation for every answer.
Ready to test yourself?
All 12 questions focus on Unit 2: Cognition — shuffled every run.
Pick an answer to see instantly whether you're right and why, then move on. Your score comes at the end.
Question text
What These Unit 2 Questions Cover
Half the set is memory: Miller's short-term capacity, the serial position effect, episodic vs. semantic memory, proactive interference (your old password blocking the new one), and context-dependent retrieval. The other half is thinking and judgment: the availability heuristic, anchoring, the framing effect, functional fixedness, algorithms vs. heuristics, and the Stroop effect's automatic-processing story.
The Unit 2 study guide covers all of it in order if you want to review before a retake.
Don't Just Read Unit 2 — Run It on Yourself
Unit 2 is the one unit you can experience directly. Measure your own interference with the Stroop test, find your working-memory capacity with the memory span test, and catch your own anchoring and framing in the cognitive bias test. Students who have felt these effects recognize them instantly in exam questions.
Unit 2 Practice Test — FAQ
What does this Unit 2 practice test cover?
Memory systems and retrieval on one side; heuristics, biases, and problem solving on the other — the two halves of Cognition the exam draws from.
What's the best way to study Unit 2?
Run the experiments on yourself first, then drill questions. Terms like automatic processing and anchoring stop being vocabulary once you've watched them happen in your own results.
All 12 Practice Questions with Answers
Prefer to review instead of quiz? Every question in this set is below — open one to reveal the answer and the reasoning. (The interactive version above shuffles both questions and answer positions, so reading this list first won't spoil a retake.)
1. George Miller proposed that the capacity of short-term memory is about:
- 3 ± 1 items
- 7 ± 2 items ✓
- 12 ± 2 items
- Unlimited
Why: Miller's 'magical number seven, plus or minus two' describes the roughly 5–9 item limit of short-term memory.
2. Remembering the first and last items of a list better than the middle is the:
- Serial position effect ✓
- Spacing effect
- Misinformation effect
- Framing effect
Why: The serial position effect combines the primacy effect (first items) and recency effect (last items).
3. Judging how likely something is by how easily examples come to mind is the:
- Representativeness heuristic
- Availability heuristic ✓
- Confirmation bias
- Anchoring bias
Why: The availability heuristic relies on the ease of recall; vivid or recent events feel more probable than they are.
4. The Stroop effect is best explained by:
- Decay of short-term memory
- Automatic reading interfering with a controlled task ✓
- The misinformation effect
- Retroactive interference
Why: Reading is automatic, so it competes with the controlled task of naming the ink color — producing the slowdown.
5. The inability to see a familiar object being used in a new way is called:
- A mental set
- Functional fixedness ✓
- Belief perseverance
- The framing effect
Why: Functional fixedness is fixating on an object's usual function, blocking creative problem solving.
6. A general rule of thumb that allows fast but sometimes error-prone judgments is a:
- Algorithm
- Heuristic ✓
- Prototype
- Schema
Why: Heuristics are mental shortcuts. Algorithms are slower step-by-step procedures that guarantee a correct solution.
7. You keep typing your old password after changing it. Your old learning is blocking the new — this is:
- Retroactive interference
- Proactive interference ✓
- The misinformation effect
- Encoding failure
Why: Proactive interference is old information disrupting new learning. Retroactive is the reverse — new learning disrupting old memories.
8. Remembering your own high-school graduation day is an example of which type of memory?
- Semantic memory
- Procedural memory
- Episodic memory ✓
- Sensory memory
Why: Episodic memory stores personally experienced events. Semantic memory holds general facts; procedural holds skills like riding a bike.
9. A car dealer first shows you a $60,000 model, making the $40,000 one seem cheap. This selling tactic exploits:
- The availability heuristic
- Anchoring ✓
- Functional fixedness
- Divergent thinking
Why: Anchoring is the tendency to rely on the first number encountered — the $60,000 anchor drags your sense of 'reasonable' upward.
10. Patients choose a surgery described as having a '90% survival rate' far more often than one with a '10% death rate,' even though they are identical. This is:
- The framing effect ✓
- Belief perseverance
- The serial position effect
- Confirmation bias
Why: Framing shows that how options are worded — gains versus losses — changes decisions even when the facts are the same.
11. Students often recall material better when tested in the same room where they learned it. This illustrates:
- Context-dependent memory ✓
- The spacing effect
- Chunking
- Iconic memory
Why: Retrieval improves when the encoding context is reinstated — environmental cues present at learning act as retrieval cues.
12. Unlike a heuristic, an algorithm:
- Is always faster
- Guarantees a solution if followed step by step ✓
- Relies on intuition
- Only works for social judgments
Why: An algorithm is a methodical procedure that guarantees a solution eventually; heuristics are faster shortcuts that can err.
Keep Going
Next up: development and learning.
Unit 3 Practice TestOriginal questions written for the redesigned AP Psychology course; not reproduced from any official exam. AppsychologyLab is not affiliated with the College Board.
Written and fact-checked by the AppsychologyLab Editorial Team against College Board materials. Last reviewed 2026-08-26. How we verify.