Questions

Question 1

When do genetically influenced characteristics become evident?

1. Directly after birth.
2. When children are toddlers.
3. During preschool.
4. During middle childhood, adolescence or adulthood.

Question 2

Fill in:

When children encounter an unfamiliar stimulus, they accommodate / assimilate it to more familiar stimuli. At the same time, their understanding accommodates / assimilates to the experience, so that when they next encounter the unfamiliar stimulus will feel less strange. 

1. Accommodate, accommodates.
2. Assimilate, assimilates.
3. Accommodate, assimilates.
4. Assimilate, accommodates.

Question 3

Which of the following is true?

1. Children from poorer families are more often secure attached. 
2. Depression is more common among poor families.

1. Only statement 1 is true.
2. Only statement 2 is true.
3. Both statements are true.
4. Both statements are false.

Question 4

Which of the following statement accurately descirbes the interaction of nature and nurture?

1. Nature does its work before birth, and nurture takes over only after birth.
2. Nature's influence continues through infancy before giving way to the influence of nurture.
3. Nature and nurture begin interacting on the fetus in the womb, and both continue to shape the individual's development.
4. The role that both nature and nurture play in development is often overstated.

Question 5

Which of the following is an example of the crucial role that timing plays in the potential impact of a teratogen?

1. The diet of a pregnant mother will influence taste preferences that the fetus will exhibit after birth.
2. By age 12 months, infants lose the ability to hear the difference between similar sounds that they do not encounter on a regular basis.
3. A virus will cause damage to the development of a fetus if contracted by the pregnant mother at specific sensitive times during pregnancy.
4. It is more difficult for children older than 11 or 12 years of age to gain competence in a new language than it is for younger children.

Question 6

The emerging fiel of epigenetics has helped to explain the ways in which a child's environment can influence gene expression. Which of the following is an example of this interaction?

1. Children with certain types of brain damage will perform on par with other children on IQ tests up to a certain age but will fall behind after that point.
2. It is more difficult for children older than 11 or 12 years of age to gain competence in a new language than it is for younger children.
3. A child who loses capability in one sense, such as sight, will often compensate with enhanced ability in another sense.
4. The amount of stress that a mother experiences during her child's infancy can affect that child's ability to regulate reaction to stress later in life.

Question 7

Looking preferences, self-initiated activities, self-socialization, and even the manner in which infants react to their parents are all examples of ...

1. The active role children play in their development.
2. The greater influence that nurture plays compared with nature in child development.
3. The ways in which development is discontinuous.
4. The ways in which the sociocultural context shapes development.

Question 8

Which of the following is an example of the theme of the active child?

1. The stability of IQ scores on average tends to increase with age.
2. Stressful maternal experiences, such as a periodic shortage of food at certain points during pregnancy, will influence the future physical development of the child.
3. Children who exhibit preoperational reasoning in some contexts may also exhibit concrete operational reasoning in others.
4. Children who are better able to regulate their emotions tend to be more socially competent and, therefore, elicit more positive reactions from other people than those who are less skilled at emotion regulation.

Question 9

Piaget's theory of cognitive development, Freud's theory of psychosexual development, and Erikson's theory of psychosocial development are all examples of ...

1. Social learning theory.
2. The stage approach to development.
3. Theories based on an empiricist perspective of development.
4. Theories based on the nativist approach to child development.

Question 10

An infant's attachment to his or her mother will more reliably predict that child's long-term security if there are no significant disruptions in the home environment. This example illustrates ...

1. The degree to which genetic influence on individual differences tends to decrease over time.
2. How continuity in individual differences is influenced by continuity in the environment.
3. The manner in which sociocultural differences exert influence on cognitive development.
4. The role of domain-specific learning mechanisms in child development.

Question 11

Which of the following statements accurately expresses a key understanding regarding the continuity and discontinuity of development?

1. Child psychologists today generally believe that, for the vast majority of traits, development occurs in a discontinuous manner.
2. Very few individual differences in psychological properties show stability over time.
3. Contrary to the theories by early behavioral psychologists like Piaget and Erikson, developmental processes rarely show a great deal of continuity.
4. The apparent continuity or discontinuity of a given developmental trait depends on the timescale on which it is considered.

Question 12

Before writing an essay, a child first considers what readers already know about the topic. Which of the four general information-processing mechanisms is illustrated by this example?

1. Strategy formation.
2. Basic processes.
3. Metacognition.
4. Content knowledge.

Question 13

Which of the following statements is not true of the development of a child's cognitive abilities?

1. A child's content knowledge in a given area can outweigh an adult's general intellectual ability.
2. Statistical learning emerges in middle childhood, after the child has begun to understand basic mathematical properties.
3. Understanding basic causal relationships allows children to infer explanations for a wide variety of observations.
4. Knowing multiple strategies for achieving goals helps children adapt to different problems and situations they will face.

Question 14

Which of the following is not a reason why demographic variables such as gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status are particularly useful to child-development researchers?

1. Each of these variables relates directly to a wide variety of other individual differences.
2. These variables tend to remain stable over time.
3. These variables have been shown to reliably predict some future outcomes.
4. These variables tend to be unaffected by environmental factors.

Question 15

Habituation is a learning process in which a child becomes familiar with a repeated stimulus. This process can motivate the child to seek out new stimulation. Besides illustrating the role of behavioral mechanisms in a child's development, this example also demonstrates which other theme of child development?

1. The sociocultural context of an individual's development.
2. The role of the active child.
3. The discontinuity of change over time.
4. The influence of nature over nurture.

Answers

Question 1

D. The interaction between nature and nurture is important here.

Question 2

D. Assimilate, assimilates.

Question 3

B. Children from poorer families often are insecurely attached.

Question 4

C. Nature and nurture begin interacting on the fetus in the womb, and both continue to shape the individual's development.

Question 5

C. A virus will cause damage to the development of a fetus if contracted by the pregnant mother at specific sensitive times during pregnancy.

Question 6

D. The amount of stress that a mother experiences during her child's infancy can affect that child's ability to regulate reaction to stress later in life.

Question 7

A. Looking preferences, self-initiated activities, self-socialization, and even the manner in which infants react to their parents are all examples of the active role children play in their development.

Question 8

D. Children who are better able to regulate their emotions tend to be more socially competent and, therefore, elicit more positive reactions from other people than those who are less skilled at emotion regulation.

Question 9

B. The stage approach to development.

Question 10

B. This example illustrates how continuity in individual differences is influenced by continuity in the environment.

Question 11

D.  The apparent continuity or discontinuity of a given developmental trait depends on the timescale on which it is considered.

Question 12

C. The information processing mechanisms that is illustrated in this example is metacognition.

Question 13

B. Statistical learning emerges in middle childhood, after the child has begun to understand basic mathematical properties.

Question 14

D. These variables tend to be unaffected by environmental factors.

Question 15

B. This example also demonstrates the role of the active child in its' own development.