Title: MCAT Original Practice-2 - 80 MCQ Cards / Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior
Tags: mcat practice2 psychological,
On every note of this deck, unless a note says otherwise:
Correct: A

Question: In the memory study chart, Condition B has the highest average recall. Which additional information is most needed before concluding B is truly superior?
Explanation: Correct: A. Apparent differences require statistical evaluation to distinguish real effects from sampling variability.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Statistical test or confidence intervals comparing groups
The color of the bars
The room number
Whether the graph title uses a noun

Question: In the survey chart, perceived control rises with neighborhood income. Which interpretation is most cautious?
Explanation: Correct: A. The chart shows association, not biological causation or absence of confounding.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Income level is associated with perceived control in this sample
Income biologically determines control beliefs
Low-income respondents cannot improve control
The measure proves no confounding exists

Question: A child sees a dog, calls it 'cat,' and then learns to create a new category for dogs. Piaget would call the category adjustment:
Explanation: Correct: A. Accommodation is modifying schemas when existing schemas do not fit new information.
Difficulty: Easy
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Accommodation
Assimilation
Conservation
Object permanence

Question: A patient can form new procedural skills but cannot remember training sessions. Which brain structure is most likely impaired?
Explanation: Correct: A. The hippocampus is critical for forming new explicit/declarative memories.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Hippocampus
Cerebellar cortex only
Primary visual cortex
Medulla

Question: A participant changes an answer after hearing unanimous wrong answers from a group. This best illustrates:
Explanation: Correct: A. Conformity involves changing behavior or judgments to align with group pressure.
Difficulty: Easy
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Conformity
Social loafing
Group polarization
Fundamental attribution error

Question: A study finds that people remember the first and last words from a list better than middle words. This is called:
Explanation: Correct: A. Primacy and recency together form the serial position effect.
Difficulty: Easy
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Serial position effect
Just-world hypothesis
Weber's law
Drive reduction

Question: A person attributes a coworker's lateness to laziness but attributes their own lateness to traffic. This pattern best reflects:
Explanation: Correct: A. Actor-observer bias is the tendency to explain others' behavior dispositionally and one's own situationally.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Actor-observer bias
Mere exposure effect
Extinction
Token economy

Question: A rat presses a lever more slowly after rewards stop. The decrease in behavior after reinforcement is removed is:
Explanation: Correct: A. Extinction occurs when a learned response declines after reinforcement is discontinued.
Difficulty: Easy
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Extinction
Acquisition
Generalization
Positive punishment

Question: Which research design best supports causal inference?
Explanation: Correct: A. Random assignment helps balance confounds, supporting causal interpretation.
Difficulty: Easy
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Random assignment to experimental and control conditions
A single cross-sectional survey
An uncontrolled case report
A correlation using archival data

Question: A physician assumes a quiet patient understands instructions, but the patient is silent because questioning doctors is discouraged in their culture. The physician's mistake most directly involves:
Explanation: Correct: A. Ethnocentrism interprets another culture through one's own norms.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Ethnocentrism
Habituation
Operant conditioning
Role strain

Question: A person experiences conflict between being a full-time employee and a caregiver for an ill parent. This is best described as:
Explanation: Correct: A. Role conflict occurs when expectations from different roles are incompatible.
Difficulty: Easy
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Role conflict
Role exit
Status inconsistency only
Anomie

Question: A community loses shared norms after rapid economic disruption, leading residents to describe life as ruleless. Durkheim would call this:
Explanation: Correct: A. Anomie refers to normlessness or weakened social regulation.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Anomie
Bureaucracy
Cultural capital
Primary deviance

Question: Which example best illustrates negative reinforcement?
Explanation: Correct: A. Negative reinforcement increases behavior by removing an aversive stimulus.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Buckling a seatbelt to stop an alarm
Getting a ticket for speeding
Receiving praise for studying
Losing phone privileges

Question: A person continues gambling because wins occur unpredictably after different numbers of plays. Which schedule maintains this behavior?
Explanation: Correct: A. Variable-ratio schedules reinforce after unpredictable numbers of responses and are resistant to extinction.
Difficulty: Easy
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Variable-ratio
Fixed-interval
Fixed-ratio with ratio 1
Continuous reinforcement

Question: Which finding would support the contact hypothesis for reducing prejudice?
Explanation: Correct: A. The contact hypothesis emphasizes equal-status, cooperative contact under supportive conditions.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Equal-status cooperative interaction reduces negative attitudes
Segregation increases empathy
Competition always reduces stereotypes
Brief exposure without interaction eliminates bias

Question: A patient has damage to Broca's area. Which deficit is most likely?
Explanation: Correct: A. Broca's area damage is associated with nonfluent aphasia.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Effortful speech production with relatively preserved comprehension
Loss of pain sensation
Inability to recognize faces only
Complete loss of hearing

Question: A student studies in the same room where the exam will occur and later recalls material more easily there. This best reflects:
Explanation: Correct: A. Environmental context can cue retrieval when learning and testing contexts match.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Context-dependent memory
Latent learning
Negative priming
Kinesthetic sense

Question: Which scenario best illustrates medicalization?
Explanation: Correct: A. Medicalization frames human conditions or behaviors as medical issues requiring diagnosis or treatment.
Difficulty: Hard
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: A behavior once treated as moral failure becomes defined as a health condition
A hospital switches billing software
A doctor retires
A patient seeks a second opinion

Question: A researcher measures whether a scale gives similar depression scores when administered one week apart to stable participants. This evaluates:
Explanation: Correct: A. Test-retest reliability assesses score stability over time when the construct is stable.
Difficulty: Medium
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Test-retest reliability
Face validity
Criterion contamination
Random assignment

Question: A person evaluates risk based on how easily examples come to mind after watching dramatic news coverage. This is:
Explanation: Correct: A. The availability heuristic uses ease of recall as a cue for probability or frequency.
Difficulty: Easy
Other fields (not shown on cards):
Choices: Availability heuristic
Algorithmic reasoning
Conservation
Absolute threshold