Resources for Psychology Students

To maintain accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Angelo State University conducts an annual evaluation of its academic programs. The psychology program is assessed, in part, by determining the students’ basic knowledge in the field when they graduate. The assessment tool is a validated test that corresponds to the curriculum. Scores on the test are used to identify strengths and weaknesses in the program and make improvements.

Students in their last semester who major in psychology are required to successfully complete the Exit Exam. A description of the exam, criteria for successful completion, recommendations for exam preparation, and sample questions are provided below.

The exam is delivered via a Blackboard course entitled “Undergraduate Exit Test”. When students apply to graduate, they are automatically enrolled in this course, which has no other purpose except delivering the exam. There is no charge for this exit procedure.

The exam covers material in ten subfields of psychology: research methods, history of psychology, social psychology, developmental psychology, learning and memory, cognition, motivation, personality, abnormal psychology, physiological psychology.

The exam is divided into two parts.

Part 1

Part 1 has 100 multiple-choice questions. It is accessible on Bb (Exit Test on the navigation bar on the left) between the mid-point and the end of each semester. It can be completed from any computer station that has the Respondus Lockdown Brower and Respondus Monitor. The exam must be taken without aid of books or notes while answering the questions.

All students must complete Part 1 during the time it is available. If they earn a passing score, 60%, they are not required to take Part 2.

Part 2

Students may not take Part 2 until after they have completed Part 1.

Part 2 has 50 multiple-choice questions. It can be completed from any computer station that has the Respondus Lockdown Brower. This exam covers the same material as is covered in Part 1 but with fewer questions. This part of the exam can be completed with the aid of books and notes. It can be taken an unlimited number of times until the passing criterion of 70% is attained.

To take the Psychology Exit Exam, you need this technology:

Access to Part I of the Exit Exam will be through Respondus Lockdown Browser and will be video recorded via Respondus Monitor. Use of another electronic device is prohibited. The Respondus Lockdown Browser is installed on all computers in ASU labs and can be downloaded onto off-campus computers by following the instructions posted in Blackboard. You will also need:

• A computer capable of running Windows 7 or later, or Mac OSX 10.8 or later
• The latest version of one of these web browsers: internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari
• Microsoft Office Suite or a compatible Open Office Suite
• Adobe Acrobat Reader
• High Speed Internet Access
• Ethernet adapter cable required (wireless connections can drop during tests and Collaborate sessions)
• Webcam

Refer to the Angelo State Online website for further technology requirements.

On Part 1 students must correctly answer 60 questions out of 100 (60%). If they do so, then they pass the Exit Exam (and need not take Part 2).

Students who do not pass Part 1 must successfully complete Part 2 by correctly answering 35 out of 50 questions (70%). Within the time frame that it is offered, they can take Part 2 as many times as is necessary to reach the passing criteria.

Students who do not successfully pass the Exit Exam by satisfying the criteria described above do not qualify for official graduation, even though they may participate in the commencement ceremony. They must repeat Part 2 of the exam again in a future semester in order to qualify for a diploma.

The exam asks basic questions about the field of psychology that are typically covered in the General Psychology course (PSY 2301) as well as elsewhere in the curriculum. Research on the items has found that students who demonstrate mastery of the material in psychology courses are able to correctly answer the questions.

Prior to taking the exam, it would be desirable to review relevant chapters in any basic textbook used in PSY 2301 General Psychology.

Sample Questions

1. The school of psychology that takes the most positive or optimistic view of human nature is:
   1. behaviorism
   2. humanism
   3. functionalism
   4. psychoanalysis
2. An impulse moves from one neuron to another through the action of:
   1. hormones
   2. action potentials
   3. neurotransmitters
   4. neuromodulators
3. Placebos are used in research to control for:
   1. the absence of a hypothesis
   2. the subjects’ expectations about treatment
   3. secondary drug effects
   4. random fluctuations in the independent variable
4. The type of learning in which voluntary (emitted) responses come to be controlled by their consequences is:
   1. operant conditioning
   2. observational learning
   3. classical conditioning
   4. contiguity learning
5. The person who hears voices singing even though none are present is suffering from:
   1. hallucinations
   2. obsessions
   3. loosened associations
   4. delusions
6. When an individual has a tendency to attribute his success to personal factors and his failure to situational factors, the individual is demonstrating:
   1. the fundamental attribution bias
   2. the self-effacing bias
   3. the illusory correlation
   4. the self-serving bias