According to Siegler’s model of strategy choice,
A) before the age of 9 or 10, children fail to use even basic strategies efficiently.
B) speed does not play a central role in children’s decisions about strategy use.
C) children often discover faster, more accurate strategies by using more
time-consuming techniques.
D) children consistently use new, more adaptive strategies as soon as they discover
them.
Sara always says “please” and “thank you” in front of her grandmother, but not always
when she is with her friends. This represents Sara’s sensitivity to
A) speech registers.
B) phonology.
C) illocutionary intent.
D) categorical speech perception.
You wonder if your son’s fear of birds has become a phobia. One indication that it has
would be if
A) his fear has persisted for over a week.
B) his fear interferes with daily activities.
C) he has begun to make jokes about birds in an attempt to overcome his fear.
D) he is only afraid of birds in specific situations, such as when playing soccer outside.
Which of the following is a limitation of using stimulant medication to treat ADHD?
A) These drugs cause a number of dangerous medical conditions.
B) Prolonged use results in extreme hyperactivity.
C) Drugs cannot teach children to compensate for inattention and impulsivity.
D) Children rapidly build a tolerance to these drugs.
According to Freud, moral development is largely complete by age
A) 3 to 4.
B) 4 to 5.
C) 5 to 6.
D) 7 to 8.
Preschoolers more often than older children evaluate lies
A) as always wrong.
B) as sometimes necessary.
C) in a positive manner.
D) based on the situation.
Children who have no friends usually have
A) undesirable personalities.
B) overprotective parents.
C) an androgynous gender identity.
D) close relationships with siblings.
During which period of development do children form their first intimate ties to others?
A) the prenatal period
B) infancy and toddlerhood
C) early childhood
D) middle childhood
Professor Atari is designing a study to determine if playing video games that require
mental rotation of visual images fosters success on spatial reasoning tests. What is the
best method of inferring cause and effect?
A) Choose a group of children who scored low on spatial reasoning tests and a group
who scored high and compare the number of video game play hours for each group.
B) Calculate a correlation between spatial reasoning test scores and the number of video
game play hours by one group of children.
C) Select a group of children who play a lot of video games and a second group who
have never played video games and compare their scores on spatial reasoning tests.
D) Randomly choose half of the children to play video games and half to play no video
games and compare spatial reasoning measures for each group.
A criticism of both the core knowledge perspective and Piaget’s theory focuses on
A) how they ignore children’s independent efforts to construct knowledge.
B) their inability to explain how heredity and environment jointly produce cognitive
change.
C) how they underestimate the cognitive competencies of children and adolescents.
D) their inability to account for or explain stagewise change.
Baby Charlotte prefers looking at a checkerboard with many small squares compared to
looking at one with a few large squares. Charlotte is demonstrating
A) contrast sensitivity.
B) pictorial depth perception.
C) shape sensitivity.
D) binocular depth perception.
The principal limitation of the information-processing perspective is that
A) it contradicts Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
B) its components are difficult to reassemble into a broad, comprehensive theory of
development.
C) it provides an imprecise account of the mechanisms of cognitive development.
D) it does not offer applications for teaching techniques that advance children’s
thinking.
Compared with other species, human children
A) develop faster.
B) are more attached to their family.
C) are more independent.
D) develop slowly.
Two preschool-age girls are playing with a train set. An older child walks by and tells
them that the train set is a “boy’s toy.” According to gender schema theory, the
A) comment will have no effect on the girls’ interest in the train set.
B) girls’ desire to play with the train set will probably diminish.
C) girls’ desire to play with the train set will probably increase.
D) comment will confuse the girls, as they have not yet developed gender-typed
interests.
__________ knowledge contributes vitally to the development of __________ memory,
or recollections of personally experienced events that occurred at a specific time and
place.
A) Long-term; short-term
B) Autobiographical; semantic
C) Semantic; episodic
D) Gist; verbatim
Four children all say, “No cookie.” Aneel means that he has eaten his cookie. Aria
means she doesn”t want a cookie. Alex means he can”t find his cookie. Aveen means
the cookie is not his. Which child uses the words “No cookie” as a rejection?
A) Aneel
B) Aria
C) Alex
D) Aveen
Which of the following factors is linked to increased suicide in adolescence?
A) the onset of puberty
B) moving away from identity foreclosure toward identity moratorium
C) immaturity and the need for attention
D) teenagers’ improved ability to plan ahea
Feng comes from a wealthy Chinese family and is attending a university in the United
States. Which of the following statements most likely applies to Feng?
A) Because he comes from a developing country, it is likely that he will not experience
emerging adulthood.
B) Emerging adulthood is a universal phase of development, so he will experience it
even if he does not attend a university.
C) Unlike most youths from his country, he will experience emerging adulthood for at
least a short time.
D) In all respects, his experience with emerging adulthood will be similar to that of
youths in the United States.
Bulimia nervosa
A) is usually easier to treat than anorexia.
B) is less common than anorexia nervosa.
C) typically appears in early adolescence.
D) affects more late-maturing than early-maturing girls.
Which of the following groups of children tends to rate their ability very high, often
underestimates task difficulty, and holds positive expectancies of success?
A) preschoolers
B) elementary school children
C) middle schoolers
D) adolescents
Paolo is a low-SES Hispanic male who is unruly in class. Paolo most likely
A) receives more encouragement and praise from his teachers than his higher-SES
peers.
B) receives more criticism from his teachers than his higher-achieving peers.
C) has a close, sensitive, and supportive relationship with his teachers.
D) receives more criticism from his peers than his teachers.
Research shows that adolescents feel greatest pressure to conform to
A) engaging in antisocial acts.
B) having sex.
C) participating in social activities.
D) using alcohol or drugs.
The second leading cause of neonatal mortality in the United States is
A) congenital defects.
B) low birth weight.
C) sudden infant death syndrome.
D) HIV/AIDS.
Research has shown that persistently aggressive children and adolescents
A) score, on average, 8 points lower in IQ than nonaggressive children and adolescents.
B) score lower in crystallized intelligence than fluid intelligence.
C) are especially deficient in verbal ability.
D) are highly verbal but lack practical problem-solving skills.
Teenagers who utilize a specialized vocabulary, have their own dress code, and “hang
out” during leisure hours in specific places are involved in a
A) clique.
B) gang.
C) peer group.
D) club.
The goal of Binet and Simon’s original intelligence test was to
A) compile a battery of tests that could be used to assess infant mental development.
B) devise an objective method for assigning pupils to special classes.
C) determine the underlying mental abilities associated with intelligence.
D) devise a systematic method for assessing classroom disruptiveness.
Annmarie’s grades in school have never been affected by her father’s multiple job
transfers. However, when the family moves from Michigan to Texas between her
sophomore and junior years of high school, Annmarie’s grades drop significantly. In
ecological systems theory, this move represents a change in her
A) chronosystem.
B) mesosystem.
C) microsystem.
D) macrosystem.
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution emphasizes __________ and __________.
A) stage; maturation
B) natural selection; stage
C) maturation; survival of the fittest
D) natural selection; survival of the fittest
The mild increase in parent”child conflict that often occurs in early adolescence
A) affects teenagers more strongly than it does parents.
B) is due to adolescents pressing for greater autonomy and parents pressing for more
aggressiveness.
C) affects parents more strongly than it does teenagers.
D) usually causes a long-lasting strain in parent”child relationships.
Dr. Blume is interested in methods for lowering blood pressure. He recruits 120 adults
with high blood pressure and assigns them to one of three treatment groupsone group
will take a daily pill, one group will be placed on a special diet, and one group will
participate in an exercise boot camp. The independent variable is __________ and the
dependent variable is __________.
A) the participants with high blood pressure; blood pressure
B) treatment type; blood pressure
C) blood pressure; treatment type
D) the daily pill; the participants with high blood pressure
A major strength of the natural, or quasi-, experiment is that it permits
A) study of relationships between variables.
B) inferences about cause-and-effect relationships.
C) generalization of experimental findings to the real world.
D) study of many real-world conditions that cannot be experimentally manipulated.
Educators who advocate a phonics approach to reading argue that
A) children should be coached on the basic rules for translating written symbols into
sounds before being given complex reading material.
B) from the beginning, children should be exposed to text in its complete form.
C) reading should be taught in a way that parallels natural-language learning.
D) as long as reading is kept whole and meaningful, children will be motivated to
discover the specific skills they need.
Long-term prediction from early temperament is best achieved
A) during early infancy.
B) before the first birthday.
C) during the second year of life.
D) after age 3.