Free EPPP (Part 1-Knowledge) Practice Questions

Sample Practice Questions

Try these 10 sample questions from the EPPP (Part 1-Knowledge) practice bank. Each includes the answer and explanation. Continue with the interactive practice above to review the full question set.

1. 1A neuropsychologist is explaining to a patient's family how an experience that was just encoded gets routed for long-term storage and later brought back. Which inner-brain structure serves as the indexer that sends memories out to the appropriate part of the cerebral hemisphere and retrieves them when they are needed?

   1. A. Hippocampus
   2. B. Thalamus
   3. C. Hypothalamus
   4. D. Basal ganglia

   Answer: A

   Explanation: The hippocampus "acts as a memory indexer—sending memories out to the appropriate part of the cerebral hemisphere for long-term storage and retrieving them when necessary." The other options are real inner-brain structures with different assignments: the thalamus is "a major clearinghouse for information going to and from the spinal cord and the cerebrum", the hypothalamus "is also an important emotional center", and the basal ganglia "are responsible for initiating and integrating movements".

   Reference: Brain Basics: Know Your Brain | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke — The Inner Brain

2. 2A consultant finds that one group of learners treats intelligence as a fixed quantity while another treats it as something that can grow. Which difference in the goals they set follows from that difference in belief?

   1. A. Those holding the fixed view focus on performance goals and on proving their intelligence, while those holding the incremental view focus on learning goals
   2. B. Those holding the fixed view focus on learning goals and on expanding their intelligence, while those holding the incremental view focus on performance goals
   3. C. Those holding either view focus on performance goals, because all evaluated settings push learners toward demonstrating rather than developing ability
   4. D. Those holding either view focus on learning goals, because beliefs about ability bear on confidence but not on the goals a learner adopts

   Answer: A

   Explanation: "Students who believe intelligence is malleable and not fixed are more likely to adhere to an" incremental or growth mind-set, while those holding the opposite view adhere to an entity theory. "Students holding to the latter view focus on performance goals and believe they continually need to demonstrate and prove their intelligence, making them more hesitant to take on highly challenging tasks and more vulnerable to negative feedback", whereas "Students with an incremental mind-set generally focus on learning goals and are more willing to take on challenging tasks". Option B reverses the pairing; options C and D deny the link between ability beliefs and goal choice.

   Reference: Apa Top 20 Principles — Top 20 Principles, Principle 1, Explanation

3. 3A client of color reports a series of brief remarks from colleagues that she found demeaning but that she cannot point to as clearly discriminatory, and she is unsure whether any of them was intended. Which construct describes these events, and what distinguishes them from other forms of discrimination?

   1. A. Microaggressions, which are brief and commonplace and involve ambiguity and subtlety rather than explicitness
   2. B. Microaggressions, which are rare and severe and involve explicitness rather than ambiguity and subtlety
   3. C. Structural discrimination, which operates through institutional rules rather than through interpersonal exchanges
   4. D. Lateral violence, which is directed by members of a group at other members of their own group

   Answer: A

   Explanation: Racial microaggressions are defined as "brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group", and "Microaggressions further involve a sense of ambiguity and subtlety, in contrast with more explicit forms of discrimination". Option B reverses both defining features. Options C and D name real phenomena described in the same document, but neither matches a series of ambiguous interpersonal remarks from colleagues outside the client's own group.

   Reference: Apa Multicultural Guidelines — Guideline 2, microaggressions

4. 4A psychologist proposes to explain a child's reasoning entirely by the cognitive stage that corresponds to the child's age. What does current research on cognitive development support?

   1. A. Reasoning is not limited or determined by a stage tied to age or grade, and stage theory accounts have been supplanted
   2. B. Reasoning is strictly limited by a stage tied to age or grade, and stage theory accounts remain the accepted framework
   3. C. Reasoning is limited by a stage tied to age until school entry, after which context rather than stage governs it
   4. D. Reasoning cannot be characterized at all before school entry, because no competencies are measurable in infancy

   Answer: A

   Explanation: "Student reasoning is not limited or determined by an underlying cognitive stage of development linked to an age or a grade level. Instead, newer research on cognitive development has supplanted these stage theory accounts." Option D is separately contradicted by the finding that "Infants have been found to have early, possibly native, competencies (biologically based) in certain domains."

   Reference: Apa Top 20 Principles — Top 20 Principles, Principle 3, Explanation

5. 5A psychologist assesses individuals in a workplace and must decide, for each, whether what she is seeing falls within the normal range of individual differences. Which competency does that judgment belong to?

   1. A. Differentiating situations requiring intervention with abnormal psychological conditions from those within the more normal range of behaviour
   2. B. Selecting among employment tests on the basis of their published reliability coefficients rather than their validity evidence
   3. C. Determining which organizational structures should be redesigned before any individual assessment is undertaken at all
   4. D. Establishing the statutory reporting duties that apply to a psychologist practising in an organizational rather than clinical setting

   Answer: A

   Explanation: At the individual level, psychologists "learn the skills for performing assessments and interventions centered on persons as separate entities in organizational and work contexts", and are expected to learn "how to differentiate between situations requiring assessment or intervention with abnormal psychological conditions and those with the more normal range of behavior." Options B, C, and D name real competencies located in the psychometric, organizational, and legal domains rather than this judgment.

   Reference: Consulting Psychology Organizational Consulting Psychology Education and Training Guidleines approved — Guidelines for Education and Training in Consulting Psychology, Individual-Level Competencies

6. 6A psychologist is planning work with an older client around a current problem and is deciding what to build the approach on. What does a strengths-based approach draw upon?

   1. A. The psychological and social resilience the person has built over the course of life, applied to the current late-life problem
   2. B. The person's earliest developmental history, since current resources are less relevant than the origins of the difficulty
   3. C. The resources available in the person's current environment only, since resilience built earlier does not persist into later life
   4. D. The absence of any prior difficulty, since a strengths-based approach applies only where the person has coped well throughout

   Answer: A

   Explanation: The guideline directs psychologists to "Encourage older adults to engage in activities that enhance their physical, cognitive, and social well-being" and to "draw upon psychological and social resilience built over the course of life to effectively address current late life problems". Options B, C, and D each discard the accumulated resilience that the approach is built on, or restrict it to clients without prior difficulty.

   Reference: Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Older Adults — Guideline on adult development and aging, Application

7. 7A mature program can document which interventions were delivered to what proportion of its target population and now wants to know whether they produced change. Which evaluation purpose fits, and what does it examine?

   1. A. Assessing effects, which examines the relationship between program activities and observed consequences
   2. B. Gaining insight, which examines whether an innovative approach to practice would be feasible to deliver
   3. C. Changing practice, which examines what the program has done and to what extent it has done it
   4. D. Affecting participants, which examines how taking part in the inquiry changes the stakeholders themselves

   Answer: A

   Explanation: "A third purpose for evaluation is to assess effects. Evaluations done for this purpose examine the relationship between program activities and observed consequences. This type of evaluation is appropriate for mature programs that can define what interventions were delivered to what proportion of the target population." The distractors give accurate accounts of the other three purposes in the same scheme, none of which asks whether change was produced.

   Reference: Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health — Focus the evaluation design, Purpose

8. 8A complaint alleges that a psychologist failed to live up to the principle of beneficence and nonmaleficence. What standing does that part of the Ethics Code have in an adjudication?

   1. A. It is aspirational and does not itself provide a basis for imposing sanctions, unlike the Ethical Standards
   2. B. It is enforceable in the same way as the Ethical Standards, which is why it is stated first in the document
   3. C. It is enforceable against members of the association but not against non-member licensees of any state board
   4. D. It is a definition section only, which supplies the meaning of terms used later in the Ethical Standards

   Answer: A

   Explanation: "The Preamble and General Principles are aspirational goals to guide psychologists toward the highest ideals of psychology. Although the Preamble and General Principles are not themselves enforceable rules, they should be considered by psychologists in arriving at an ethical course of action. The Ethical Standards set forth enforceable rules for conduct as psychologists." The same section adds that relying on General Principles as a basis for sanctions "distorts both their meaning and purpose", which rules out options B and C.

   Reference: Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct — Introduction and Applicability; General Principles

9. 9A patient sustains a circumscribed injury confined to both occipital lobes, with the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes spared. Which deficit is the expected direct consequence of damage at that location?

   1. A. Loss of vision
   2. B. Loss of hearing
   3. C. Loss of voluntary movement
   4. D. Loss of touch sensation

   Answer: A

   Explanation: "Damage to the occipital lobes can cause blindness." The three incorrect options name deficits that follow injury elsewhere in the same cortical map: the top of each temporal lobe holds "an area responsible for receiving information from the ears", the motor cortex in the frontal lobe "helps plan, control, and execute voluntary movement", and the somatosensory cortex of the parietal lobe receives "information about temperature, taste, touch, and movement from the rest of the body".

   Reference: Brain Basics: Know Your Brain | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke — The Geography of Thought

10. 10After a failure, a learner asks why it happened. Which causal attribution leaves the learner better able to cope, and what property of that attribution accounts for the difference?

    1. A. Attributing failure to lack of effort, because effort is unstable and controllable by the learner
    2. B. Attributing failure to low ability, because ability is unstable and controllable by the learner
    3. C. Attributing failure to task difficulty, because difficulty is unstable and controllable by the learner
    4. D. Attributing failure to chance, because chance outcomes are unstable and controllable by the learner

    Answer: A

    Explanation: "Attributions that tend to blame one" own ability are associated with the view that intelligence is fixed, while attributions that blame lack of effort reflect an incremental view. "Students are better able to cope when failure is attributed to a lack of effort rather than to low ability because the former is unstable (effort fluctuates over time) and controllable (students can generally try harder if they want to)." Options B, C, and D attach the properties of effort to causes that do not have them.

    Reference: Apa Top 20 Principles — Top 20 Principles, Principle 1, Explanation