AP Psychology: Categories of Psychological Disorders (Part 2) (Drill 29)

Question 1. Over the past year, a 22-year-old college student has become increasingly withdrawn. He tells his roommate that a government agency is transmitting messages to him through the campus Wi-Fi, and he sometimes speaks in sentences that start on one topic and end on an unrelated one. He has also stopped showering regularly and shows little emotional expression in conversations. Which combination of symptom types is present in this presentation?

• A) Positive symptoms only
• B) Negative symptoms only
• C) Both positive and negative symptoms ✓
• D) Dissociative symptoms only according to this psychological framework

Explanation: The delusions (government transmissions) and disorganized speech are positive symptoms, additions to normal experience, while the social withdrawal, poor hygiene, and flat affect are negative symptoms, reductions in normal functioning. Schizophrenia spectrum disorders in AP Psychology are characterized by the presence of positive and/or negative symptoms, and both are clearly present here. (A) is wrong because ignoring the negative symptoms misses half the clinical picture; (B) is wrong for the mirror-image reason. (D) is the true-but-irrelevant distractor: dissociative symptoms are a real category, but nothing in the stem describes identity disruption, amnesia, or depersonalization, students sometimes pick this because "withdrawn" sounds dissociative, which is a misconception. [Practice 1]

Question 2. Which of the following best distinguishes obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)?

• A) OCPD involves a long-standing pattern of perfectionism and rigid control that the person generally views as appropriate, while OCD involves intrusive thoughts and compulsions that the person typically experiences as unwanted and distressing ✓
• B) OCPD characteristically includes hallucinations, while OCD does not
• C) OCPD is diagnosed only in children, while OCD is diagnosed only in adults
• D) OCD and OCPD are two names for the same condition

Explanation: OCPD is a personality disorder: a long-standing pattern of perfectionism, orderliness, and need for control that the person usually sees as reasonable or even virtuous. OCD, by contrast, involves obsessions and compulsions that the person typically experiences as intrusive and unwanted. Confusing OCD and OCPD is one of the most common errors on AP Psychology, which is why they sit in separate categories. (B) introduces hallucinations, which belong to the schizophrenia spectrum, not either disorder here. (D) is a flat misconception; they are separate disorders. (C) is factually false; both can be diagnosed in adulthood. [Practice 1]

Question 3. A child psychologist evaluates a 7-year-old who has difficulty sustaining attention during schoolwork, frequently interrupts peers, struggles to stay seated during group activities, and often loses materials needed for tasks. Symptoms have been present since at least age 5, occur both at home and at school, and cause significant difficulty in daily functioning. Which category of psychological disorder best fits?

• A) Specific learning disorder
• B) Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder ✓
• C) Autism spectrum disorder
• D) Oppositional defiant disorder within the context the example establishes

Explanation: The child shows inattentive features (difficulty sustaining attention, losing materials) and hyperactive-impulsive features (interrupting, not staying seated) beginning in early childhood, present in multiple settings, and causing impairment, the profile of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, a neurodevelopmental disorder in AP Psychology. (C) is the true-but-irrelevant distractor: autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder often discussed alongside ADHD, but its defining features are persistent deficits in social communication and restricted, repetitive behaviors, none of which the stem describes. (A) focuses on domain-specific academic deficits in reading, math, or writing, which are not mentioned. (D) involves a pattern of defiant, vindictive behavior toward authority figures, which is also absent. [Practice 1]

Question 4. A team of researchers wants to investigate whether the heritability of schizophrenia is higher than the heritability of antisocial personality disorder. They collect concordance-rate data from monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs where at least one twin has the disorder. Which of the following would most strongly support the claim that schizophrenia has a larger genetic component than antisocial personality disorder?

• A) The MZ–DZ concordance gap is substantially larger for schizophrenia than for antisocial personality disorder ✓
• B) The base rate of schizophrenia in the general population is lower than the base rate of antisocial personality disorder
• C) Adoption studies show that adopted children resemble their adoptive parents on personality measures
• D) People with schizophrenia are more likely than people with antisocial personality disorder to seek treatment

Explanation: Twin studies estimate heritability by comparing MZ twins (who share nearly 100% of their genes) with DZ twins (who share about 50%); a larger MZ–DZ concordance gap implies a stronger genetic contribution. If that gap is bigger for schizophrenia than for antisocial personality disorder, that is direct evidence of a larger genetic component. (B) is the true-but-irrelevant distractor: base rates are genuine epidemiological facts, but they say nothing about heritability, a disorder can be rare and largely environmental, or common and largely genetic. (C) would actually argue against a strong genetic contribution, which is the reverse of what's asked. (D) concerns help-seeking behavior, not genetic contribution. [Practice 2]

Question 5. The table below shows concordance rates (the probability that the second twin has the disorder given that the first one does) for four disorders:

Disorder	MZ concordance	DZ concordance
Schizophrenia	48%	17%
Bipolar I disorder	40%	7%
Major depressive disorder	38%	20%
Autism spectrum disorder	60%	10%

Which of the following conclusions is best supported by these data?

• A) Environmental factors play no role in any of these four disorders
• B) All four disorders show evidence of a genetic contribution, as indicated by higher concordance in MZ than DZ twins, with the MZ–DZ gap being largest for autism spectrum disorder and bipolar I disorder ✓
• C) Major depressive disorder shows no genetic component whatsoever
• D) Because MZ concordance is below 100% for every disorder, genetics is irrelevant to all of them

Explanation: Every row shows higher MZ than DZ concordance, which is the standard twin-study signature of a genetic contribution. The largest MZ–DZ gaps are for autism spectrum disorder (50 points) and bipolar I disorder (33 points), so (B) accurately summarizes what the numbers actually show and names the reasoning behind the conclusion. (A) overstates, concordance below 100% in MZ twins actually indicates that environment also matters, so genetics cannot be the whole story. (C) is wrong because major depressive disorder still has a meaningful MZ–DZ gap (18 points), indicating some genetic contribution even if it is smaller than the others. (D) is the true-but-irrelevant distractor: it is true that MZ concordance is below 100% for every disorder, and that point is genuinely used to argue for environmental influence, but concluding "genetics is irrelevant" reverses the direction of that evidence and ignores the clear MZ-over-DZ pattern. This question connects twin-study methods (research methods) to disorder categories (Unit 5). [Practice 3]