Physical immaturity is exaggerated in humans, who devote about _____ percent of their
total years to growing.
A) 5
B) 10
C) 15
D) 20
In the case study of Zinnia Mae, being cut off from family and community ties and
being overwhelmed by financial strain and feelings of helplessness resulted in
A) her preoccupation with finding her children’s father.
B) the abandonment of her children at a local church.
C) a depleted home learning environment for her children.
D) her eventual suicide at age 25.
Nikhil and Simon exhibit high self-esteem, social maturity, task persistence, and are
usually in an upbeat mood. What type of child-rearing style does their parents most
likely use?
A) authoritative
B) authoritarian
C) permissive
D) uninvolved
Folic acid taken around the time of conception can lower the incidence of __________,
and taken during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy cuts in half the risk of __________.
A) maternal high blood pressure; premature birth
B) anemia; cleft palate
C) neural tube defects; premature delivery
D) anemia; low birth weight
Which of the following statements is true about the cross-sectional design?
A) Researchers are not concerned with cohort effects.
B) Researchers are not concerned with selective attrition.
C) It is rarely used because it is so time-consuming.
D) Researchers are concerned with both practice and cohort effects.
ERP and fMRI measures of brain activity indicate that second-language processing is
A) more lateralized, and also overlaps more with brain areas devoted to first-language
processing, in older than in younger learners.
B) less lateralized, and also overlaps less with brain areas devoted to first-language
processing, in older than in younger learners.
C) better developed in adults who take language classes than in young children who
immigrated to the United States in infancy.
D) shared between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, whereas first-language
processing is primarily located in the right hemisphere.
Before about 9 months of age, how are babies likely to treat a picture of a person or an
object?
A) They touch or manipulate the picture in ways that reveal confusion about the
picture’s real nature.
B) They do not seem to have difficulty distinguishing between the symbol and the
referent.
C) They use it as a tool to modify an existing mental representation.
D) They treat it as a symbol.
Gardner believes that
A) each intelligence emerges out of g at different points in development.
B) each intelligence has a unique biological basis and a distinct course of development.
C) excellence in most fields requires a combination of intelligences.
D) crystallized intelligence is more predictive of academic success than fluid
intelligence.
Which of the following statements is true regarding fathers and attachment security?
A) Unlike mothers’, fathers’ interactional synchrony with infants does not predict
attachment security.
B) Fathers in many cultures, including Australia, Germany, and Japan, devote more
time to physical care and expressing affection than to playful interaction.
C) Fathers tend to engage in highly arousing physical play with bursts of excitement
and surprise that increase as play progresses.
D) Fathers and mothers in Western nations tend to play in similar ways with their
children, providing toys and playing gentle conventional games.
Which of the following statements is true about preschoolers?
A) They are often confused by subtle distinctions between mental states, such as
“know” and “forget.”
B) They believe their mental activity is busiest while they wait, look at pictures, listen
to stories, or read books.
C) They understand that when a person shows no obvious cues that he or she is
thinking, mental activity is still occurring.
D) They focus on the process of thinking rather than on the outcomes.
Compared with North American Caucasian infants, Chinese and Japanese babies
A) take longer to soothe themselves when upset.
B) display less anxiety when interacting with a stranger.
C) smile, laugh, and cry more frequently.
D) tend to be less active, irritable, and vocal, and better at quieting themselves.
Gender-schematic thinking is so powerful that when children see others behaving in
“gender-inconsistent” ways, they
A) experience a crisis of gender labeling that disrupts peer interactions.
B) become more pronounced in their gender segregation as well as gender-role
conformity.
C) often cannot remember the behavior or distort their memory to make it
“gender-consistent.”
D) object and tell that person not to behave in such a way.
Which of the following words is most likely to be among a toddler’s first spoken words?
A) “skip”
B) “ball”
C) “tree”
D) “chair”
In some cultures, such as the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea, adults rarely communicate
with young children and never play social games with them, yet their children acquire
language within the normal time frame. This suggests that
A) social interactionists’ theories about language development are invalid.
B) adult molding of communication during the first year is not essential.
C) other individuals, such as older peers, mold early communication skills in these
cultures.
D) gesturing is more important than verbalization.
A loss of a sense of safety, desensitization to violence, and a pessimistic view of the
future are characteristics of
A) late-onset adolescent delinquents.
B) inner-city children.
C) children of war.
D) children who grow up in large, single-parent families.
Three-year-old Kailyn says “dawbuddies” when referring to strawberries. Her father
repeatedly corrects her mistake, but
A) his attempts are unsuccessful because she will not learn the correct pronunciation
until she matures.
B) his attempts are unsuccessful because the word “strawberries” has too many
syllables for a 3-year-old to pronounce clearly.
C) it will take 1 to 2 weeks of constant practice until she can pronounce the word
correctly.
D) his attempts are unsuccessful because this type of mispronunciation is symptomatic
of a speech disorder.
A baby who first habituates to a green circle and then recovers to a blue circle
A) does not remember the green circle.
B) perceives both stimuli as identical.
C) prefers the green circle.
D) can distinguish between green and blue.
Frequent media multitaskers, who are accustomed to continuously shifting their
attention between tasks,
A) experience greater activity in the hippocampus, which plays a vital role in explicit
memory.
B) experience no difficulty applying their learning to new problems.
C) have a harder time filtering out irrelevant stimuli when they are not multitasking.
D) have an easier time ignoring irrelevant stimuli when they are not multitasking.
Which of the following statements is true about child development theories?
A) They guide and give meaning to our observations and help us understand
development.
B) They are defined as mere opinions or beliefs.
C) They provide ultimate truths about children and adolescents.
D) They are difficult to verify, even with contemporary research methods.
Which of the following factors have contributed to the period of development called
emerging adulthood?
A) Teenagers from large families assume adult roles upon entering adolescence.
B) The transition to adult roles has become increasingly prolonged.
C) Schooling is increasingly directed toward preparation for the world of work.
D) Young people make enduring commitments soon after high school graduation.
For children under age 7 or 8, observer influence is
A) impossible to minimize.
B) usually present for the first 10 to 12 sessions.
C) generally limited to the first session or two.
D) rarely a concern.
Which of the following statements is true about differential treatment of sons and
daughters by parents?
A) Fathers more than mothers encourage “gender-appropriate” behavior.
B) Mothers more than fathers encourage “gender-appropriate” behavior.
C) Mothers more than fathers place more pressure to achieve on sons than on daughters.
D) Both mothers and fathers place more pressure to achieve on sons than on daughters.
By age 3, capacity for self-regulation predicts
A) children’s skill at portraying an emotion they do not feel.
B) empathy.
C) anger and hostility toward peers.
D) gender differences in make-believe play.
During mitosis,
A) a single cell develops into a complex, many-celled human being.
B) new body cells are created, each with its own unique DNA.
C) the number of chromosomes normally present in body cells is halved.
D) crossing over occurs.
__________ mothers spend much time in physical contact with their babies and rarely
leave them in others’ care.
A) Dogon
B) Israeli kibbutz
C) German
D) Japanese
In a__________ design, researchers can identify common patterns as well as individual
differences in development because it tracks the performance of each person over time.
A) cross-sectional
B) microgenetic
C) longitudinal
D) sequential
Which of the following statements is true about individuals with sex chromosome
disorders?
A) Males with XYY syndrome are more aggressive and antisocial than XY males.
B) Verbal difficulties are common among girls with triple X syndrome.
C) Most children with sex chromosome disorders suffer from mental retardation.
D) Girls with Turner syndrome have trouble with reading and vocabulary.
Emerging adults’ romantic ties
A) last longer and involve greater trust and commitment.
B) rarely lead to cohabitation.
C) express a more limited set of desired qualities and expectations.
D) tend to be short-lived.
Which of the following statements reflects Freud’s view of guilt?
A) Guilt does not emerge until middle childhood.
B) Guilt is a hostile impulse redirected toward the self.
C) Guilt is controlled by the id.
D) Guilt is a hostile impulse directed toward others.
While playing at the park, Sam and Carlos run after one another, wrestle, and pretend to
fight. The boys are engaged in
A) functional play.
B) a hostile interaction.
C) rough-and-tumble play.
D) repetitive motor action.
Today, more than _____ percent of U.S. mothers with a child under age 2 are employed.
A) 30
B) 40
C) 50
D) 60
Professor Chan believes that language is a unique human accomplishment that children
acquire naturally due to the structure of the brain. Professor Chan supports the
__________ perspective of language development.
A) nativist
B) behaviorist
C) interactionist
D) sociocultural
In Piaget’s theory, primary circular reactions are oriented toward __________, whereas
secondary circular reactions are oriented toward __________.
A) the infant’s own body; the surrounding world
B) involuntary actions; voluntary actions
C) external actions; internal representations
D) concrete thought; abstract thought
Research on adolescent suicide indicates that compared to boys, girls
A) are twice as likely to kill themselves.
B) make more unsuccessful suicide attempts.
C) tend to choose techniques that lead to instant death.
D) are more likely to blame their parents for their suicide attempts.