Chapter 7 Child Development
A toddler sees his mother lying in bed because she doesn't feel well, so he gives her his favorite blanket because he knows that it always makes him feel better. This is an example of: a. egocentrism. b. animism. c. conservation. d. transductive reasoning.
A
Executive function enables you to a. coordinate attention and control behavioral responses so you can attain a goal. b. recall specific memories, rather than just general, impressionistic memories. c. develop an organized and well-integrated knowledge base. d. employ various strategies to enhance your autobiographical memory.
A
If you showed a 7-year-old child six blue wooden blocks and 4 white wooden block and asked the child "Are there more blue blocks or more wooden blocks?" you would be testing the child's ability to: a. classify objects into larger categories. b. conserve number. c. perform seriation. d. use transductive reasoning.
A
Kara's mother is helping her with a 100-piece puzzle. Kara is only four-years-old and the puzzle is too difficult for her. Kara's mother tells her to find all the corner pieces, then the pieces with the flat sides, and then they group the rest of the pieces together by color. In order to help Kara complete the puzzle, her mother uses the concept of a. scaffolding. b. directed learning. c. centration. d. dialectical thinking.
A
One of the basic principles in Piaget's theory of cognitive development is that: a. the mistakes that children make in their reasoning are meaningful because they indicate the nature of the child's current thought processes. b. a child's surprise when one of their expectations is violated is the best measure of their level of cognitive development. c. the strongest influence on the way we think about and understand the world is the social world in which we live. d. children must develop metacognitive functions before they can reason accurately about the world.
A
Rehearsal becomes a more effective memory strategy when children learn to a. simply repeat the information they want to remember. b. not overdo it, but rather to stop after a few repetitions. c. connect the information they are learning to other related information. d. retain information in sensory storage for a longer period of time.
A
Rehearsal becomes a more effective memory strategy when children learn to: a. simply repeat the information they want to remember. b. not overdo it, but rather to stop after a few repetitions. c. connect the information they are learning to other related information. d. retain information in sensory storage for a longer period of time.
A
Research on the effectiveness of the treatments used for children with ADHD has found that a. stimulants such as Ritalin are effective in increasing attention and reducing problem behaviors for many children. b. diet modification that eliminates sugar, food dyes, and additives is as effective, or more effective, than medications. c. teaching parents more effective parenting strategies is usually enough to rectify the child's behavioral problems. d. a combination of anti-depressants and anti-psychotic medication is the most effective approach.
A
The first stage of cognitive development in Piaget's theory of cognitive development is the a. sensorimotor stage. b. preoperational stage. c. operational stage. d. formal operations stage.
A
When we encounter a new experience that does not fit into any of our cognitive schemes, Piaget would say that: a. it throws us into a state of disequilibrium which feels uncomfortable. b. we ignore the information until we can develop the cognitive ability to understand it. c. we observe how other people are reacting to the situation and copy their reactions. d. we use transductive reasoning to try to make sense of the experience.
A
As children with ADHD get older, their symptoms: a. tend to lessen in severity, until they are undetectable in adulthood. b. may change or lessen as they move into adulthood, but ADHD cannot be cured. c. get worse over time, and are usually associated with a number of behavioral problems. d. continue, but in adulthood they are called bi-polar disorder rather than ADHD.
B
Children can begin to think logically once they reach Piaget's stage of a. concrete operations. b. formal operations. c. postformal operations. d. preoperational operations.
B
False memories for events that did not really happen are a. fairly easy to create in young children. b. extremely difficult to create in young children. c. impossible to create in either young or older children. d. very unstable once they are created.
B
For a child to be able to understand that the amount of water in a tall, thin glass is still the same amount that was it was when it was in a short, fat glass, the child must be able to: a. classify the liquid as a substance that can be found in both a tall, thin glass and a short, fat glass. b. use hypothetico-deductive reasoning to solve the problem. c. decenter on the height of the liquid in the glass and pay attention to both the width of the container and the height of the liquid. d. understand that knowledge is not absolute but relative, so they can resolve contradictory information.
B
Vygotsky's theory of cognitive development differs from Piaget's theory in that: a. Piaget's theory portrays children's cognitive development as occurring much more rapidly. b. Vygotsky saw cognitive development as based upon the child's social interaction with others. c. Piaget saw children as being dependent upon others for the learning that occurs. d. Vygotsky portrays children's cognitive development as developing in a single predictable way.
B
When a young child grasps a toy, it is part of his experience and is real to him, but when he is not holding the toy, it doesn't exist for him anymore. Piaget says this is because young children do not have: a. a circular reaction for objects. b. object permanence. c. conservation. d. dialectic thinking.
B
Intuitive thought is a type of reasoning in which children a. cannot see the world from another's point of view. b. begin with a general case, and reason down to a specific instance. c. begin to put together logical explanations but are still influenced more by what they perceive than by logical reasoning. d. begin with a set of specific instances and reason up to a general conclusion.
C
Recent cross-cultural research on Piaget's theory has found that: a. children in non-Western cultures move through the stages at a much slower rate than children in Western cultures. b. Piaget's tasks cannot be adapted in ways that make them culturally relevant for cross-cultural research. c. the stages that Piaget describes appear in the same order in other cultures, but the rate at which children move through the stages can differ. d. contrary to earlier findings, children from non-Western cultures usually perform better on Piagetian tasks than children from Western cultures.
C
The ability of the brain to coordinate attention and memory and control behavioral responses for the purpose of attaining a certain goal is called a. habituation. b. cognitive flexibility. c. executive function. d. elaboration.
C
The coordination of attention and memory and the control of behavioral responses for the purpose of attaining a goal are handled by the a. experience-expectant parts of the brain. b. experience-dependent parts of the brain. c. executive function of the brain. d. parietal lobe.
C
An explanation for why students who study with distractions (for example, having the TV on, listening to music, or answering text messages) end up with a more superficial understanding of the information is that: a. the synapses run out of neurotransmitters to convey the information from one neuron to another. b. divided attention stimulates the frontal-striatal area of the brain. c. they cannot rely upon core knowledge to help them process the information. d. when we divide our attention in this way, we do not use the part of the brain designed for deep processing.
D
As we build our knowledge base on a particular topic, we find that a. it becomes increasingly difficult for us to add new information to that knowledge base. b. the new information that we encounter creates contradictions that we must resolve. c. it requires more and more processing capacity to maintain the base. d. it becomes easier to remember new information related to that topic.
D
Compared to older adolescents and adults, younger adolescents are more likely to a. use elaboration rather than rehearsal as a memory strategy. b. have a more integrated knowledge base. c. create intuitive, automatic memories rather than specific, verbatim memories. d. use both the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus when working on a memory task.
D
In Vygotsky's theory, the amount and type of help that a skilled adult or peer provides to a child is called: a. knowledge building. b. social speech. c. a cognitive scheme. d. scaffolding.
D
Piaget's theory of cognitive development portrays children as: a. passive recipients of knowledge for whom language shapes thought. b. actively constructing their knowledge within a social, cultural and historical setting. c. passive recipients of knowledge because basic information is present from birth. d. actively constructing their knowledge based on the child's own interactions with the environment, and the use of language to express thought.
D
______________________ theory says that brain function is central to cognitive development but innate knowledge is not. a. Piaget's genetic epistemology b. Core knowledge c. Vygotsky's sociocultural d. Information processing
D
________________________ is the technique that has been used to explore whether there are basic areas of understanding about the physical world that appear to be innate and built into the human brain. a. Violation of expectations b. Reversibility assessment c. Circular reaction testing d. Executive function testing
D
Older children and adults are more likely to remember information in an intuitive, automatic way rather than as a specific, verbatim memory. This type of memory has been called a(n) a. fuzzy trace memory. b. intuitive memory. c. instinctual memory traces. d. executive memory traces.
a
Research on the theory of core knowledge has found that even before their first birthday, babies: a. are capable of showing an elementary understanding of the principles of logic. b. can remember and repeat a complicated series of actions that they have observed only once. c. understand core principles because of their social interactions with adults. d. are surprised when they see events that seem to defy nature, such as a seeing a block pushed beyond the edge of a table without falling.
A
The major cognitive accomplishment during the preoperational stage is: a. acquiring the ability to represent actions mentally rather than physically. b. developing object permanence. c. beginning to think logically. d. translating circular reactions into goal directed activity.
A
Vygotsky's sociocultural theory portrays cognitive development as: a. having many aspects that are innate and which build upon experiences. b. a process in which brain functioning is central and interacts with experiences. c. a continuous process that gives a very small role to innate knowledge. d. occurring in stages and depending upon physical maturation.
A
When an adolescent can solve a complex problem by first formulating hypotheses and then testing those hypotheses in a systematic and logical way, the adolescent is engaging in: a. hypothetico-deductive reasoning. b. transformative reasoning. c. reversible operations. d. dialectical thinking.
A
As adolescents become able to think about broad abstract concepts, it may: a. make them more self-centered and egocentric. b. make them idealistic as they think about the way that things could be. c. begin to help them be able to reverse operations. d. enable them to bring together and analyze contradictory thoughts.
B
Which of the following techniques have critics of Piaget's idea that object permanence needs time to develop used to support their case that infants are born with "persistence"? a. They have measured the amount of time that infants spend looking at an event that violates an expectation of object permanence. b. They have looked to see if an infant will search for an object that is hidden under a piece of cloth. c. They have measured the age at which infants first show signs of separation anxiety. d. They have looked at whether infants appear to have strategies for searching for lost objects.
A
In Piaget's theory, fitting new information into an existing cognitive scheme is the process of: a. information processing. b. centration. c. assimilation. d. accommodation.
C
A characteristic of the preoperational stage of cognitive development is egocentrism which means that children in this stage: a. are selfish and cannot be taught how to share with others. b. cannot understand things from someone else's perspective. c. believe that they are the best at doing everything they try to do. d. think that others should listen to what they have to say or what they want.
B
Ideas taken from information processing theory have guided research that has looked at: a. how children learn from their interactions with other people. b. the basic cognitive processes that underlie cognitive growth. c. how systematic use of rewards and punishments shape behavior. d. how children actively explore their environment as they learn.
B
If you ask a child to watch you as you take one of two identical balls of clay and roll that ball into a clay snake, and the child then thinks there is more clay in the snake because it is longer than the other ball, the child has: a. used transductive reasoning to frame their answer. b. centered on only one aspect of the situation (the length) and ignored other aspects (the height or diameter). c. attributed a characteristic of a living organism to the clay snake. d. failed to store the image of the identical balls of clay in their memory.
B
In Vygotsky's theory, private speech is: a. what a skilled helper tells the child to do. b. the way that a child elaborates upon what others tell her. c. how a child turns interactions with others into internal thought. d. the maximum amount of help that someone else can give a child.
B
In Vygotsky's theory, the cognitive abilities that are in the process of forming and which a child can demonstrate with a little help is called the: a. scaffolding zone. b. zone of proximal development. c. zone of knowledge. d. cognitive zone.
B
In a research study on the effects of television as a distractor to carrying out the task of doing homework, individuals who had the television on in the background: a. remembered and understood less when they were tested on the material. b. were able to effectively multitask and could recall information from both the television program and the homework content equally. c. were able to shut out the television and did equally as well as those without television on in the background. d. were not able to focus on the homework and were not able to complete the work.
B
In older infants a. their ability to habituate to familiar things takes longer. b. sustained attention increases when they are shown more complex stimuli. c. selective attention increases, but sustained attention decreases. d. they are more interested in looking at familiar things than at novel things.
B
Infantile amnesia refers to the fact the a. infants younger than 6 months cannot remember things that they learned when they were younger. b. most people cannot recall memories of their life before the age of 2. c. when people are asked to recall their early childhood, they recall false memories. d. infants have not yet developed metamemory.
B
Long-term and working memory reach peak capacity at age a. 11 or 12. b. 9 or 10. c. 15 or 16. d. 5 or 6.
B
Piaget would say that the stages in his theory: a. are only general descriptions of how cognitive development occurs and do not apply to every child. b. typically happen in the order he describes, but can occur out of order for children who are very bright. c. always occur in the order he describes, but the ages at which they occur are only approximations. d. are based upon the typical social experiences that children have at different ages.
B
Research has shown that infants and toddlers can remember something they have learned for weeks but a. 6 weeks is about the longest time they can remember earlier experiences. b. they are more likely to remember something when they are in the same circumstances as when they first encountered it. c. it is the youngest infants, not the toddlers, who have the longest memories for information they have learned. d. this memory depends upon whether or not the infant is enjoying the experience they have.
B
Researchers who have been critical of the ages that Piaget attached to each of the stages in his theory of cognitive development have claimed that: a. children can show abilities that Piaget said they did not have if you simplify the task that is being used to test for that ability. b. early development may proceed in stages, but the later stages of cognitive development occur in a series of small, incremental steps. c. Piaget made the tasks too easy because the abilities he describes do not appear in development until later than he said. d. no real cognitive advancement occurs until children are old enough to engage in social interactions with other people.
B
The ability to think abstractly first appears during Piaget's stage of: a. concrete operations. b. formal operations. c. postformal operations. d. dialectical operations.
B
The concept from information processing theory that assumes that our capacity to process information is limited in childhood relates to Piaget's concept of a. scaffolding. b. cognitive flexibility. c. centration. d. object permanence.
B
The theory of core knowledge is based on the idea that infants: a. construct their understanding of the world through their social interactions. b. are born with an innate understanding of some aspects of the world. c. construct their understanding of the world through active experimentation. d. learn about the world as they are reinforced for their experiences.
B
When children develop classification skills, they become better at games such as "20 Questions", demonstrated by how they: a. begin by asking questions from the smallest category possible to narrow out all the potential answers. b. continue to work their way down from larger to smaller categories when asking questions. c. use knowledge from past experience to answer questions. d. focus on one aspect and continue to ask questions along that dimension.
B
Which of the following is not an ability associated with executive function? a. Cognitive flexibility b. Scaffolding c. Planning d. Inhibitory control
B
____________ is a memory strategy that helps us to remember what to do or say in different familiar situations. a. Metacognition b. A script c. A knowledge base d. Elaboration
B
In Piaget's theory, a schema is: a. an understanding of memory, how it works, and how to use it effectively. b. a memory strategy for increasing the number of associations that ties individual pieces of information together. c. a cognitive framework that allows us to place concepts, objects, and experiences into categories or groups. d. a way to coordinate attention and memory and control behavioral responses in order to attain a goal.
C
A reduced ability to sustain attention has been found among 5-year-olds who a. have attended preschool. b. come from large families. c. come from low-income families. d. no longer take naps.
C
Children do not develop the ability to think logically and abstractly until they reach the stage of: a. conventional operations. b. concrete operations. c. formal operations. d. postformal operations.
C
During adolescence, the belief known as the ________________ can place the young person at risk because it has been associated with a willingness to take risks. a. imaginary audience b. animism myth c. personal fable d. reversibility ideation
C
How quickly we can take in information is our a. sustained attention. b. automaticity. c. processing capacity. d. processing speed.
C
In Piaget's theory of cognitive development, in order to solve conservation problems, you must be able to: a. focus on one aspect of a situation and fail to notice changes in other aspects. b. bring together and analyze contradictory thoughts or actions. c. understand that the amount, volume or mass of objects remains the same even if their appearance changes. d. organize concepts into a series of hierarchical categories.
C
In one experiment with 4-month-old infants, babies saw a toy placed behind a screen and then the screen tipped backwards. Some infants saw the screen stop when it hit the toy (as they would expect), but other saw the screen tip all the way backwards as though the screen was going right through the toy. These infants: a. appeared distressed by the event and cried because the toy wasn't there. b. turned away from the event and refused to look at the screen again. c. looked considerably longer at the event than infants who saw the screen tip backwards but the toy stopped the fall of the screen. d. tried to get out of their seats so they could explore the screen and the toy.
C
Metacognition is a. the ability to stay on task and ignore distractions. b. an understanding of memory, how it works, and how to make it more efficient. c. an ability to think about and monitor one's own thoughts. d. the ability to switch focus as needed in order to complete a task.
C
The task Piaget created to determine whether a child is egocentric is called: a. the centration task. b. the A-not-B task. c. the three mountains task. d. transductive reasoning task.
C
When a young infant repeats a reflexive action because the results are pleasurable, Piaget called this motor pattern a: a. sensory scheme. b. motoric pattern. c. circular reaction. d. reflex conservation.
C
David Elkind proposed that because adolescents are often preoccupied with their own looks and behaviors, they believe that they are the center of attention for other people also. Elkind calls this a. centrifugal attention. b. hypothetico-deductive reasoning. c. adolescent reversibility. d. adolescent egocentrism.
D
In Piaget's theory, when you need to change the way you think about something in order to understand a new experience, you are engaging in the process of: a. decentration. b. scaffolding. c. assimilation. d. accommodation.
D
Paying attention to certain things while tuning out others is the process of _____________ and maintaining focus over time is the process of ______________. a. sustained attention; focused attention b. selective attention; habituation c. habituation; sustained attention d. selective attention; sustained attention
D
The A-not-B task was used by Piaget to test for a. egocentrism. b. dialectic thinking. c. conservation. d. object permanence.
D
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that ADHD in younger children or in children with mild symptoms be treated: a. aggressively with medications to keep the condition from getting worse. b. by removing the child from a regular classroom and placing the child in a special needs class. c. with behavioral interventions. d. with stimulants such as Ritalin.
D
The ability to analyze and try to bring together contradictory thoughts and emotions does not appear until the stage of: a. concrete operations. b. hypothetico-deductive reasoning. c. formal operations. d. postformal or dialectical thinking.
D
The memory strategy that involves creating extra connections that tie the information together is called a. rehearsal. b. repetition. c. eidetic memory. d. elaboration.
D
The most effective treatment approach for children with ADHD is a. the use of traditional psychotherapy. b. the use of anti-depressant medications. c. the use of various dietary modifications. d. a comprehensive approach that brings together several different types of interventions.
D
