AP Psychology, AP exams

Unit 2: Cognition

Unit 2 covers perception, memory, thinking and problem solving, and intelligence testing. Memory processes and their failures generate a large share of exam questions, as do the heuristics and biases that shape judgment. Psychometric concepts such as reliability, validity, and standardization also live here.

Position: 2 of 5 units
Topics covered: 7 topics in this guide

What is covered

Topics inside this unit.

These topics describe the scope students most often review for this part of AP Psychology. Treat them as a study checklist rather than an exhaustive list of what a single exam form can sample.

Perception: Gestalt principles, depth and motion cues, perceptual constancies, attention, and top-down versus bottom-up processing.
Memory models and encoding: Working memory, levels of processing, mnemonic devices, and the difference between effortful and automatic encoding.
Storage and retrieval: Long-term memory systems, retrieval cues, context and state dependence, and the serial position effect.
Forgetting and memory distortion: Interference, decay, retrieval failure, source amnesia, and the constructive nature of reconstructed memory.
Thinking, problem solving, and judgment: Algorithms and heuristics, framing, confirmation bias, functional fixedness, and overconfidence.
Language and cognition: Structure and acquisition of language and the relationship between language and thought.
Intelligence and testing: Theories of intelligence, standardization and norms, reliability and validity, and the historical misuse of testing.

Study tips

How to practice Cognition.

Section-specific guidance that follows from how this material is usually tested.

Practice generating your own example for each bias and heuristic; the free-response section asks for application.
Build a memory-process flowchart from encoding through retrieval and annotate where each failure occurs.
Learn reliability and validity as distinct ideas with a concrete testing example for each.

Where this fits

Unit 2: Cognition is 2 of 5 units in the AP Psychology guide. Use the full guide to balance it against everything else you have to review.

Back to the AP Psychology guide Official exam information

Sample Cognition questions

Practice questions, not yet expert-reviewed

Original practice questions written to the published framework for this section. No expert has reviewed them, and they are not taken from any official exam. Try each one before you open the answer.

Question 1Foundational
What is the term for the tendency to recall the first and last items of a list better than the items in the middle?
1. AThe serial position effect
2. BThe spacing effect
3. CChunking
4. DProactive interference
Show answer
Answer: A. The serial position effect
Early items benefit from rehearsal into long-term memory and late items are still available in short-term memory, leaving the middle items weakest. The spacing effect is the tempting distractor, but it concerns how distributing practice over time improves retention rather than where an item sits in a list.
Key insight: Primacy comes from rehearsal and recency from a still-active short-term store, so the two ends are strong for different reasons.
Question 2Foundational
Which Gestalt organizing principle describes the tendency to perceive objects positioned close together as belonging to the same group?
1. AProximity
2. BSimilarity
3. CClosure
4. DContinuity
Show answer
Answer: A. Proximity
Proximity groups items by nearness, which is why widely spaced dots read as separate clusters. Similarity is the tempting distractor, but it groups items by shared features such as color or shape rather than by distance.
Key insight: Gestalt principles show perception is organized by the brain rather than read off the retina.
Question 3Intermediate
Which mental shortcut leads people to judge an event as more likely simply because vivid examples of it come to mind easily?
1. AThe availability heuristic
2. BThe representativeness heuristic
3. CConfirmation bias
4. DFunctional fixedness
Show answer
Answer: A. The availability heuristic
Because dramatic events are heavily reported and easily recalled, people overestimate risks such as plane crashes and underestimate common ones. The representativeness heuristic is the tempting distractor, but it judges probability by resemblance to a prototype rather than by ease of recall.
Key insight: Availability confuses how easily something is remembered with how often it actually happens.
Question 4Intermediate
True or False: A psychological test can be highly reliable and still not be valid, because producing consistent scores does not prove the test measures what it claims to measure.
1. ATrue
2. BFalse
Show answer
Answer: A. True
Reliability is consistency and validity is accuracy, so a bathroom scale that always reads five pounds heavy is perfectly reliable and clearly invalid. The reverse does not hold: a test cannot be valid without being reliable, because scores that fluctuate randomly cannot be measuring anything accurately.
Key insight: Reliability is necessary for validity but never sufficient; consistent is not the same as correct.
Question 5Advanced
A person searching for something to hold papers down overlooks a heavy stapler because they think of it only as a fastening device. Which obstacle to problem solving does this illustrate?
1. AFunctional fixedness
2. BMental set
3. CConfirmation bias
4. DThe framing effect
Show answer
Answer: A. Functional fixedness
Functional fixedness is the inability to see an object as serving any purpose other than its familiar one. Mental set is the tempting distractor, but it is the tendency to repeat a problem-solving strategy that worked before, which is about the approach taken rather than about how an object is understood.
Key insight: Functional fixedness limits what a thing can be; mental set limits how a problem can be attacked.

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