AP Psychology: Sensation — Drill 6

About This Drill

AP Psychology: Sensation — Drill 6 is a Multiple Choice practice drill covering Unit 1: Biological Bases of Behavior. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

Sharpen your AP Psychology exam prep with these practice questions on Topic 1.6 Sensation, covering sensory adaptation, signal detection theory, Weber's law, absolute threshold, and the cortical homunculus. Each AP Psychology practice question targets a key concept from the AP CED.

Questions in This Drill

1. A factory worker spends eight hours a day operating heavy machinery. After several months, she no longer consciously notices the loud hum of the machines during her shift, even though she hears it clearly when she first arrives. Co-workers visiting for the first time notice the noise immediately. What process best explains the worker's reduced awareness?
2. A researcher recruits 80 participants to study taste perception. Half receive a bitter-masking compound before tasting a series of foods; the other half taste the same foods without it. The researcher measures how many milligrams of a bitter substance each participant must detect before noticing it. The researcher concludes that the compound raises the threshold for bitter taste detection. In this study, what is the dependent variable?
3. A patient can detect faint tones in a quiet testing room but frequently misses sounds of the same volume in noisy environments. One audiologist says the patient's hearing is normal; another says the patient has a deficit. Which framework best explains why both could be drawing on valid evidence?
4. A researcher tests weight discrimination. Participants holding a 100-gram weight can reliably detect an added 2 grams. When the starting weight is increased to 200 grams, participants require an added 4 grams to detect a difference. These findings are most consistent with which principle?
5. A professor tells a class that patients with damage to a specific region of the somatosensory cortex lose sensation in their right hand but not their arm, torso, or face. A student asks why such localized damage affects only one body part. The professor's best explanation draws on which concept?