How to review for the AP Psychology exam

Why this matters

A student can recite "negative reinforcement strengthens a behavior" from a flashcard and still read "negative" as "bad". Give that student a new scenario where a behavior stops a nagging sound, and they call it punishment. The student got the flashcard right every time, and the teacher has to wait for the unit test to find out who mixed the two up.

What an AP Psychology review needs to cover

The AP Psychology course framework has five units, and each one is 15% to 25% of the multiple-choice section (AP Central):

• Unit 1: Biological Bases of Behavior
• Unit 2: Cognition
• Unit 3: Development and Learning
• Unit 4: Social Psychology and Personality
• Unit 5: Mental and Physical Health

The exam is fully digital and takes 2 hours 40 minutes in the Bluebook app (AP Students). Section I has 75 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes, worth 66.7% of the score. Section II has two free-response questions in 70 minutes, worth 33.3%: the Article Analysis Question, about one summarized peer-reviewed source, and the Evidence-Based Question, where students get three summarized peer-reviewed sources and back a claim with two pieces of evidence from them (AP Central). Applying psychological concepts, theories and research findings makes up 65% of the multiple-choice section (AP Central), so a review has to practice spotting a concept in a situation, beyond knowing its definition.

In the Flint activity, each student explains a learning concept from Unit 3, such as operant or classical conditioning (AP Psychology Course at a Glance), with an example from their own life. A flashcard can't tell a student whether their own example fits the term. Sparky reads the student's example, and when the example doesn't fit the term, asks about that example instead of giving the answer. Once the student fixes it, Sparky turns the student's corrected examples into a short slide deck to review from.

Sparky gets Jasmine to untangle negative reinforcement and punishment

Jasmine starts out reading "negative" as "bad" and ends up giving a correct example of negative reinforcement from her coffee shop job. Every student gets the same concepts and guidelines, and Sparky's questions and slides come from each student's own examples.

Sparky works from Jasmine's own examplesSparky sends Jasmine back to her own exampleA right answer gets a harder question

J

Jasmine

Interest: Training her puppy, a part-time job at a coffee shopStarting point: Thinks "negative" means punishment

Jasmine

ok negative reinforcement. when biscuit chews on my shoes i take his favorite toy away so he learns not to do it. its negative bc its a bad thing for him

Sparky

Let's look at your example more closely. In your example, is something being added or removed? Does Biscuit's shoe-chewing behavior go up or down afterward?

Jasmine

removed, the toy gets taken away. and the chewing goes down. wait so if the behavior goes down its punishment not reinforcement?? so its negative punishment bc negative means something gets removed not that its bad

Sparky

Exactly right! "Negative" = removed, and behavior goes down = punishment. How would you change your Biscuit example to make it positive punishment instead?

Jasmine

id have to add something he doesnt like when he chews. like i say NO really loud or shake a can with coins in it. something gets added and the chewing goes down so positive punishment

Sparky

Your review deck is ready! It has your two Biscuit examples (negative punishment and positive punishment) plus a summary table showing all four operant conditioning terms. Can you give me a second example from a different part of your life, maybe from your coffee shop job, for a different concept?

Jasmine

ok negative reinforcement for real this time lol. at the coffee shop the milk steamer makes this awful screech if the wand isnt deep enough in the milk. so now i always push it in deeper right away. the screech gets removed and me pushing it deeper goes up

Sparky

That's a perfect negative reinforcement example. Something unpleasant is removed (the screech stops) and the behavior goes up. How would you change that same coffee shop example to show positive reinforcement instead?

Fixed her own example, then gave a correct negative reinforcement example

Jasmine is an example student, and Sparky's replies are shortened. Her deck has three slides: negative punishment, positive punishment, and a table of all four terms sorted by added or removed and behavior up or down.

What Flint did for Jasmine

• When Jasmine called taking away Biscuit's toy negative reinforcement, Sparky asked whether something was added or removed and whether the chewing went up or down, without naming the right term.
• After each right answer, Sparky asked a harder question: turn the Biscuit example into positive punishment, then turn the coffee shop example into positive reinforcement.
• Sparky made her a slide deck from her corrected Biscuit examples, with her examples on the slides and none of her first mistake.

A teacher can't do this by hand for 30 students, and Sparky does it in every student's chat.

The activity page shows who still reads "negative" as "bad"

While the class works, Needs attention shows the teacher which student is stuck and on which message. After three or more students submit, activity analytics lists what the class explained well, where students went wrong, and a follow-up to practice next.

Set up the activity for free

Open the AP Psychology review activity in Flint's public library, select Use activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and assign it to a class. Sparky makes the slide deck in each student's chat with the activity's default settings, so there is nothing extra to turn on. To review a different unit, replace the concepts in Guidelines for Sparky with your own, such as memory errors from Cognition or attribution theory from Social Psychology and Personality.

For more test prep activities, see Flint for test prep.