EPPP Exam Flashcards

Q: How many questions are on the EPPP?

The 2026 EPPP has two parts. Part 1-Knowledge has 225 items (175 scored, 50 pretest) with 4 hours 15 minutes for exam items. Part 2-Skills has 170 items (130 scored, 40 pretest) with 4 hours 10 minutes. Pretest items are unscored and used for future exam development.

Q: What is the passing score for the EPPP?

ASPPB uses a 200-800 scaled score and recommends 500 as the standard for independent practice (450 for supervised practice). Each licensing authority sets its own requirement, but ASPPB's handbook notes all licensing authorities currently accept the recommended independent-practice score for Part 1-Knowledge.

Q: What are the eight EPPP content domains?

Biological Bases of Behavior (10%), Cognitive-Affective Bases (13%), Social and Cultural Bases (11%), Growth and Lifespan Development (12%), Assessment and Diagnosis (16%), Treatment/Intervention/Prevention/Supervision (15%), Research Methods and Statistics (7%), and Ethical/Legal/Professional Issues (16%).

Q: Which EPPP domains should I prioritize?

Assessment and Diagnosis (16%), Ethical/Legal/Professional Issues (16%), and Treatment/Intervention/Prevention/Supervision (15%) together account for nearly half of the exam, so these yield the highest return. Research and statistics is smaller (7%) but is often a weak area worth deliberate review.

Q: How many times can I take the EPPP?

ASPPB states a candidate may not take either EPPP part more than four times in any 12-month period. Licensing authorities set their own waiting periods and remediation rules, and ASPPB and many boards recommend roughly 90 days between attempts.

Question 1

Neurotransmitter Functions

Accepted Answer

Dopamine influences reward, motor control, and is implicated in psychosis; serotonin affects mood, sleep, and appetite; GABA is the primary inhibitory transmitter; glutamate is the primary excitatory transmitter; acetylcholine supports memory and is reduced in Alzheimer disease.

Question 2

Hemispheric Specialization

Accepted Answer

For most right-handed people, the left hemisphere is dominant for language (Broca's and Wernicke's areas) and the right hemisphere for visuospatial processing and prosody. Damage location predicts the specific deficit pattern.

Question 3

SSRIs Mechanism and Onset

Accepted Answer

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors block serotonin reuptake, increasing synaptic availability. Therapeutic mood effects typically take several weeks despite immediate receptor action, which is important for managing patient expectations and adherence.

Question 4

Antipsychotic Side Effects

Accepted Answer

Typical (first-generation) antipsychotics carry higher risk of extrapyramidal symptoms and tardive dyskinesia. Atypicals carry higher metabolic risk (weight gain, dyslipidemia, diabetes). Neuroleptic malignant syndrome is a rare, life-threatening reaction.

Question 5

HPA Axis and Stress

Accepted Answer

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis releases cortisol in response to stress. Chronic activation is associated with hippocampal effects, immune changes, and is implicated in depression and PTSD.

Question 6

Classical vs. Operant Conditioning

Accepted Answer

Classical conditioning pairs a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus to produce a reflexive response (Pavlov). Operant conditioning changes voluntary behavior through consequences—reinforcement and punishment (Skinner).

Question 7

Reinforcement Schedules

Accepted Answer

Variable-ratio schedules produce the highest, most resistant response rates (e.g., gambling). Fixed schedules produce post-reinforcement pauses. Intermittent reinforcement makes behavior more resistant to extinction than continuous reinforcement.

Question 8

Negative Reinforcement vs. Punishment

Accepted Answer

Negative reinforcement removes an aversive stimulus to increase a behavior; punishment decreases a behavior. They are commonly confused—negative reinforcement is not punishment because it strengthens responding.

Question 9

Memory Systems

Accepted Answer

Working memory holds limited information briefly for processing; declarative (explicit) memory stores facts and events; procedural (implicit) memory stores skills. The hippocampus is critical for forming new declarative memories.

Question 10

Cognitive Dissonance

Accepted Answer

The discomfort from holding inconsistent cognitions or acting against one's beliefs, motivating attitude or behavior change to reduce the tension (Festinger). It explains attitude shifts after counter-attitudinal behavior.

Question 11

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Accepted Answer

Performance improves with arousal up to an optimal point, then declines. The optimal arousal level is lower for complex tasks and higher for simple ones, explaining why moderate stress can aid simple performance.

Question 12

Fundamental Attribution Error

Accepted Answer

The tendency to overattribute others' behavior to internal dispositions while underweighting situational factors. People show the opposite (situational) bias when explaining their own behavior—the actor-observer asymmetry.

Question 13

Conformity, Compliance, Obedience

Accepted Answer

Conformity is matching a group norm (Asch); compliance is yielding to a request; obedience is following an authority's order (Milgram). They differ in the source and directness of social pressure.

Question 14

Bystander Effect

Accepted Answer

The likelihood that any individual helps decreases as the number of bystanders increases, largely through diffusion of responsibility and pluralistic ignorance.

Question 15

Cultural Competence and Humility

Accepted Answer

Cultural competence is knowledge and skill working across cultures; cultural humility adds ongoing self-reflection and recognition of power imbalances. Both are required to avoid imposing the clinician's cultural assumptions.

Question 16

Acculturation Strategies (Berry)

Accepted Answer

Integration (maintaining heritage and adopting new culture) is generally associated with the best adjustment; marginalization (rejecting both) with the worst. Assimilation and separation fall between.

Question 17

Stereotype Threat

Accepted Answer

The risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one's group can impair performance under evaluative conditions, independent of ability—an important consideration when interpreting assessment results.

Question 18

Erikson's Psychosocial Stages

Accepted Answer

Eight lifespan stages, each a developmental crisis (e.g., trust vs. mistrust in infancy, identity vs. role confusion in adolescence, integrity vs. despair in late life). Resolution shapes later adjustment.

Question 19

Piaget's Cognitive Stages

Accepted Answer

Sensorimotor (object permanence), preoperational (egocentrism, lack of conservation), concrete operational (conservation, logical operations on concrete items), and formal operational (abstract reasoning).

Question 20

Attachment Styles (Ainsworth)

Accepted Answer

Strange Situation classifications: secure, anxious-ambivalent, avoidant, and disorganized. Early attachment is associated with later relational patterns and emotion regulation.

Question 21

Kohlberg's Moral Development

Accepted Answer

Preconventional (avoid punishment, self-interest), conventional (social approval, law and order), and postconventional (social contract, universal ethical principles) levels of moral reasoning.

Question 22

Temperament and Goodness of Fit

Accepted Answer

Inborn behavioral style (Thomas & Chess) interacts with the environment; adjustment depends on the match between a child's temperament and caregiving demands, not temperament alone.

Question 23

Risk and Protective Factors

Accepted Answer

Resilience reflects the balance of risk factors (e.g., adversity, abuse) and protective factors (e.g., a supportive relationship, competence). Outcomes depend on this interaction, not single causes.

Question 24

Reliability vs. Validity

Accepted Answer

Reliability is the consistency of measurement; validity is whether a test measures what it intends. A test can be reliable but not valid, but it cannot be valid without being reliable.

Question 25

Types of Validity

Accepted Answer

Content (representativeness of items), criterion (concurrent and predictive correlation with an outcome), and construct (measures the theoretical trait). Construct validity is the overarching framework.

Question 26

Standard Error of Measurement

Accepted Answer

Estimates the band of error around an observed score due to imperfect reliability. It is used to build confidence intervals so a single score is interpreted as a range, not an exact value.

Question 27

Sensitivity vs. Specificity

Accepted Answer

Sensitivity is the proportion of true cases correctly identified (few false negatives, good for screening). Specificity is the proportion of non-cases correctly identified (few false positives, good for confirming).

Question 28

Norm-Referenced vs. Criterion-Referenced

Accepted Answer

Norm-referenced scores compare a person to a normative sample (percentiles, standard scores). Criterion-referenced scores compare performance to a fixed standard regardless of others' performance.

Question 29

Differential Diagnosis

Accepted Answer

Systematically distinguishing disorders with overlapping presentations (e.g., bipolar vs. borderline, ADHD vs. anxiety) using course, criteria, and rule-outs to reach an accurate DSM-5-TR diagnosis.

Question 30

Test Bias and Fairness

Accepted Answer

A test is biased if it systematically over- or under-predicts for a group. Fairness requires appropriate norms, validated use for the population, and cautious interpretation across cultural and linguistic differences.

Question 31

Base Rates in Interpretation

Accepted Answer

The prevalence of a condition affects predictive value. With a low base rate, even an accurate test yields many false positives, so screening results must be interpreted in context of base rates.

Question 32

Empirically Supported Treatments

Accepted Answer

Interventions with research support for specific conditions (e.g., exposure-based therapy for anxiety, CBT for depression, DBT for borderline personality disorder). Matching treatment to condition improves outcomes.

Question 33

Common Factors

Accepted Answer

Therapeutic alliance, empathy, expectancy, and goal consensus account for a substantial portion of outcome variance across modalities—often more than specific techniques alone.

Question 34

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Core

Accepted Answer

Targets the link among thoughts, emotions, and behaviors using cognitive restructuring and behavioral techniques. It is structured, goal-oriented, and strongly supported for many disorders.

Question 35

Exposure Therapy

Accepted Answer

Systematic, graded confrontation with feared stimuli without avoidance, allowing extinction of the fear response. It is first-line for many anxiety and trauma-related disorders; avoidance maintains the disorder.

Question 36

Stages of Change (Transtheoretical Model)

Accepted Answer

Precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. Interventions should be matched to the client's stage; pushing action before readiness predicts resistance and dropout.

Question 37

Prevention Levels

Accepted Answer

Primary prevention reduces incidence before onset; secondary prevention is early detection and intervention; tertiary prevention reduces disability from established conditions.

Question 38

Clinical Supervision Responsibility

Accepted Answer

Supervisors are responsible for client welfare, must ensure clients know they are seen by a supervisee, and monitor the supervisee's competence and ethics. Vicarious liability applies to the supervisor.

Question 39

Crisis Intervention Priority

Accepted Answer

Stabilize immediate safety first—assess suicide and violence risk and reduce access to means—before deeper therapeutic work. Safety considerations can override the planned session agenda and routine confidentiality.

Question 40

Independent vs. Dependent Variable

Accepted Answer

The independent variable is manipulated by the researcher; the dependent variable is measured for effects. Confounding variables vary with the IV and threaten internal validity.

Question 41

Type I vs. Type II Error

Accepted Answer

Type I (alpha) is rejecting a true null hypothesis (false positive). Type II (beta) is failing to reject a false null (false negative). Power (1 minus beta) is the ability to detect a true effect.

Question 42

Internal vs. External Validity

Accepted Answer

Internal validity is confidence that the IV caused the change in the DV (controlling confounds). External validity is the generalizability of findings to other people, settings, and times.

Question 43

Effect Size vs. Statistical Significance

Accepted Answer

Significance indicates an effect is unlikely due to chance; effect size quantifies its magnitude. A large sample can make a trivial effect significant, so effect size is essential for practical importance.

Question 44

Choosing a Statistical Test

Accepted Answer

Test selection depends on the level of measurement and design: t-test (two group means), ANOVA (three or more means), correlation/regression (associations among continuous variables), chi-square (categorical frequencies).

Question 45

APA Ethics Code Structure

Accepted Answer

Five aspirational General Principles (beneficence/nonmaleficence, fidelity/responsibility, integrity, justice, respect for rights and dignity) and enforceable Standards. Principles guide; Standards are the mandatory rules.

Question 46

Limits of Confidentiality

Accepted Answer

Confidentiality is broken when required by law or to prevent serious harm: mandated abuse reporting, danger to self or others (duty to protect/Tarasoff), and valid court orders. Limits are disclosed at the outset.

Question 47

Multiple Relationships

Accepted Answer

Relationships beyond the professional one are avoided when they risk impaired objectivity or exploitation. Sexual relationships with current clients are prohibited, and post-termination restrictions also apply.

Question 48

Informed Consent for Treatment

Accepted Answer

Clients must understand the nature, risks, benefits, alternatives, fees, and confidentiality limits, and consent voluntarily with capacity. With minors or impaired clients, obtain consent from the legal representative and assent from the client.

Question 49

Competence Boundaries

Accepted Answer

Psychologists practice only within the boundaries of their education, training, and supervised experience and obtain consultation, training, or refer when client needs exceed their competence.

Question 50

Duty to Protect (Tarasoff)

Accepted Answer

When a client poses a serious, foreseeable threat to an identifiable victim, the psychologist may have a legal/ethical obligation to take protective action. The specific duty varies by jurisdiction.

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