Psych. of Adol. Exam 2

All of the following contributed to the rise of age segregation in contemporary society, except:

The spread of compulsory (required by law) education, which led to *age grading*. The baby boom.

According to Kinney's research, youngsters who were "nerds" in middle school:

The study found that many individuals managed to transform themselves from "nerds" into "normals" during high school. For some, this was accomplished because the high school peer structure was more differentiated and permeable. *As opposed to middle school, where there were only two groups—the popular and the unpopular—in high school, there were more socially acceptable groups.*

Joshua's parents set rules for him, but he feels that when a rule seems unfair, he can discuss it with his parents and, even if they don't agree to change the rule, they at least listen to his opinions. Joshua's parents fit best into which of the following parenting styles

authoritarian

A separate youth culture is said to promote all of the following, except:

According to some observers, age segregation has so strengthened the power of the peer group that American adolescents have become alienated from and unfamiliar with the values of adults. In this view, *problems such as youth unemployment, teenage suicide, juvenile delinquency, drug and alcohol use, and teen pregnancy can be attributed to the rise of peer groups and the isolation of adolescents from adults*.

According to Family Systems Model, financial strain increases mothers' and fathers'______, which, in turn, make parents more irritable, which adversely affects the quality of their parenting.

According to the Family Stress Model, financial strain increases mothers' and fathers' *feelings of depression and anxiety, worsens marriages, and causes conflicts between parents and adolescents*. These consequences, in turn, make parents more irritable, which adversely affects the quality of their parenting

All of the following are significant changes in peer groups that occur during adolescence:

As the adolescent develops increasing facility in intimate relationships, the peer group moves from the familiarity of same-sex activities to contact with other-sex peers, but mainly in the safety of the larger group. It is only after adolescents have been slowly socialized into dating roles—primarily by modeling their higher-status peers—that the safety of numbers is no longer needed and adolescents begin pairing off.

_____ are settings for intimate interactions and friendships, whereas _____ are based on reputation, rather than on actual social interaction.

Cliques, crowds

Growing up, Jessica's parents had a lot of marital conflict. At times Jessica was even *exposed* to some domestic violence. Jessica is likely to develop which of the following problems?

Exposure to overt marital conflict and domestic violence has been linked to a wide range of adolescent problems, including depression, aggression, and delinquency.

A group against which an individual compares himself or herself is called:

a reference group

The process of separating students into different levels of classes within the same school is called:

tracking

According to research, _________ can be an effective way for enhancing the development of adolescents' reasoning abilities, moral judgment and empathy:

*Family discussions* in which decisions, rules, and expectations are explained help the child understand social systems and social relationships. This understanding plays an important role in the development of reasoning abilities, theory of mind, moral judgment, and empathy

________ involvement has been found to enhance the adjustment of low-income students in their transition to middle school.

*Parental* support and involvement are associated with better adolescent adjustment during school transitions.

One study described in the textbook indicated that, among Black and Latino students, transitioning to a school where the proportion of students from the same ethnic background is lower than it had been at their previous school is associated with all of the following:

Among Black and Latino students, transitioning to a school where the proportion of students from the same ethnic background is lower than it had been at their previous school is *associated with greater disengagement from school, lower grades, and more frequent absences.*

Amy, a social reformer in the early twentieth century, would have likely considered all of the following to be good reasons to push for secondary education, except which one of these?

Eager to improve living conditions for the masses, social reformers envisioned education as a means of improving the lives of the poor and working classes. Anxious to see that foreign-born immigrants were well socialized into the American way of life, reformers presented universal secondary education as a necessary part of the process of Americanization. By 1915, the idea of universal compulsory education for adolescents had gained widespread acceptance.

Felicia has a problematic relationship with her parents. All of the following negative effects are likely to occur for Felicia:

Problematic parent-child relationships—ones that are coercive and hostile— lead to the development of an antisocial disposition in the child, and this disposition contributes, in elementary school, to both school failure and rejection by classmates.

Which has a greater effect on students' scholastic achievement: school size or class size?

Smaller schools. Student performance and interest in school improve when their schools are made less bureaucratic and more intimate.

Some researchers have tried to teach adolescents to use nonviolent forms of conflict resolution. Are these programs effective?

Some researchers have found that trying to teach adolescents to use nonviolent forms of conflict resolution are often *unsuccessful* because such behaviors are perceived by adolescents as being weak or even inviting retaliation.

According to the textbook, victims of cyberbullying often report all of the following adjustment problems, except:

Students who are harassed by their classmates, whether in person or electronically, report a range of adjustment problems, including low self-esteem, depression, suicidal ideation, and academic difficulties, as well as problems in social skills and difficulties in controlling negative emotions, such as anger and aggression

Felicia is very warm and accepting to both of her two children, but she also sets firm rules that the children must follow with very few exceptions. According to Baumrind, the characteristics that best describe her are:

authoritative

Professor Gates is studying large groups of adolescents to learn about their particular mini-cultures. Professor Gates is most likely studying:

ethnography

Many immigrant families place an especially high value on _____, an orientation in which the needs of one's family take precedence over the needs of the individual.

familism

Decisions about whether to implement tracking in non-tracked schools, or whether to "de-track" schools that use ability grouping, are typically quite controversial; not surprisingly, parents of students in the higher tracks _____, whereas parents in the lower tracks _____.

favor, oppose it.

Don's teacher is concerned about him because he is passive and indifferent to new experiences, and shows little intellectual curiosity. He also shows signs of developing low self-esteem. Based on Baumrind's classification of parenting styles, the best guess is that Don's parents are:

indifferent

In comparison with teenagers in previous times, teenagers in contemporary societies spend ________ time with their peers ________ with their parents.

more,than

According to the textbook, during adolescence, which are more influential, nonshared or shared environmental influences?

non shared

Although young children may seem unaffected by a divorce at the time, problems may emerge when they are adolescents. This delayed effect is called:

the sleeper effect.

Hostile attributional bias:

the tendency to interpret ambiguous interactions with others as deliberately hostile

Which of the following statements about stepfamilies is false?

younger adolescents have a harder time adjusting to stepfamilies than older adolescents

Which of the following statements about the way in which teenagers relate to mothers and fathers is false?

Across many ethnic groups and cultures, adolescents tend to be closer to their mothers, to spend more time alone with their mothers, and to feel more comfortable talking to their mothers about problems and other emotional matters; as a consequence, mothers tend to be more involved than fathers in their adolescents' lives. Fathers often rely on mothers for information about their adolescent's activities, but mothers rarely rely on fathers for this. Fathers are more likely to be perceived as relatively distant authority figures to be consulted for objective information (such as help with homework) but not for emotional support (such as help with problems with a boyfriend or girlfriend). Adolescents also fight more often with their mothers than with their fathers and perceive mothers as more controlling, but this does not appear to jeopardize the closeness of the mother-adolescent relationship. Although adolescents spend about twice as much time with their mothers as with their fathers, time spent with fathers—perhaps because it is a relative rarity—is more predictive of adolescents' social competence and feelings of self-worth.

According to the textbook and in regard to gangs, all of the following are true:

Adolescents who belong to gangs are at greater risk for many types of problems in addition to antisocial behavior, including elevated levels of psychological distress, impulsivity, psychopathic tendencies, exposure to violence, and violent victimization. This is also true for female adolescents who hang around with male gangs, which increases their involvement in high-risk sexual behavior, drug use, and crime. Adolescents who are gang members also are more likely to have behavioral and mental health problems in adulthood

Which of the following is not a way that adolescents' behavior is affected by their crowd membership?

Adolescents' behavior is affected by their crowd membership in several ways. First, adolescents often imitate the behavior of high-status peers—the crowd leaders. Second, crowds establish social norms—values and expectations—that members strive to follow. That is, even lower-status members of a crowd influence each other by behaving in ways that identify them as members (e.g., using certain expressions when speaking), and other adolescents who want to be accepted by them conform to these standards. Third, when crowd members behave in ways that are consistent with these norms, they are reinforced for doing so. An adolescent who dresses in a way that is consistent with a crowd's expectation may be complimented ("nice shoes, Sophie") whereas one who does not may be ignored, or even made fun of ("I can't believe you're wearing those!"). Finally, when adolescents are reinforced for following a crowd's norms, they feel better about themselves and further incorporate their crowd membership into their identity. After being praised many times for her clothes by one of the popular crowd's members, for example, a girl will start to think of herself as a member of that crowd and begin to derive her identity in part from it.

Eleanor Maccoby states all of the following reasons that adolescents separate themselves into same-sex cliques:

First, cliques are formed largely on the basis of shared activities and interests. Preadolescent and early adolescent boys and girls are interested in different things. A second reason for sex segregation in adolescent peer groups concerns young adolescents' sensitivity about sex roles. Over the course of childhood, boys and girls become increasingly concerned about behaving in ways judged to be sex-appropriate. When little boys show an interest in dolls, they are often told either explicitly (by parents, friends, and teachers) or implicitly (by television, books, and other mass media), "Boys don't play with dolls—those are for girls." And when girls start wrestling or roughhousing, they are often similarly reprimanded.

In middle school, Carlos was involved in many school plays and musicals. Being part of the drama crowd was important for Carlos in what way?

In contrast, because crowds are based more on reputation and stereotype than on interaction, they probably contribute more to the adolescent's *sense of identity and self-conception*—for better and for worse—than to his or her actual social development.

Ethnic differences in parenting practices suggest that:

In general, authoritative parenting is less prevalent among Black, Asian, or Hispanic families than among White families, no doubt because parenting practices are often linked to cultural values and beliefs. Nevertheless, even though authoritative parenting is less common in ethnic minority families, its effects on adolescent adjustment are beneficial in all ethnic groups. In other words, ethnic minority youngsters benefit from parenting that is responsive and demanding, just as their nonminority peers do.

Some educational psychologists, including Jacquelynne Eccles, argue that the difficulty adolescents experience in the transition to junior high school is a result of the:

In general, school transitions, whenever they occur, temporarily disrupt the academic performance, behavior, and self-image of adolescents; more frequent school changes are associated with lower achievement, as well as higher rates of emotional and behavioral problems. *Students who have more academic and psychosocial problems before making a school transition cope less successfully with it.*

Which of the following research findings does not provide evidence to support the achievement gap between White and non-White youngsters?

Indeed, the achievement gap between White and non-White youngsters, which had been closing for some time, grew wider during the 1990s, especially in large urban school districts. It narrowed again toward the end of the twentieth century, but has remained substantial since.

Which of the following was not an effect of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)?

Many commentators had criticized the practice of *social promotion*—moving students from one grade to the next regardless of their academic performance—arguing that poor and ethnic minority youth especially were being cheated out of a good education and graduated without the skills necessary to succeed in college or the labor force. Forcing schools to regularly assess student progress and publicize how students were faring would give parents and the community the information they needed to put pressure on schools to do better. Although NCLB sounded good in principle, it was problematic in practice and met with tremendous resistance from the start. States complained that they did not have the resources to conduct the mandated assessments or to respond to failing students' poor performance. Teachers and parents complained that the focus on standardized testing adversely affects what takes place in the classroom—if a school's financial future depends only on test scores, why should teachers do anything other than teach to the test? (Be honest—how much effort do you devote to learning material that you know you won't be tested on?) Some critics worried that the shift in focus to standardized testing would discourage schools from using assignments that improve important capacities like self-control, persistence, and determination—which are critical for success but more likely influenced through working on longer-term projects than studying for tests

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was a policy designed to ensure that all students, regardless of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic background, receive a high-quality public education. Which of the following statements is false?

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) required that schools create and enforce academic standards by annually testing all students and by reporting the results of students' performance to the public. Underperforming schools—schools where students' test scores did not improve—would be given an opportunity to do a better job the following year, by providing additional instruction, tutoring, or special services for students who needed them. But schools that continued to fail eventually would have funding taken away and might be forced to close.

Research suggests that creating "schools within schools" in larger high schools is associated with all except which of the following?

On the positive side, creating schools within schools leads to the development of a more positive social environment; on the negative side, though, if not done carefully, schools may inadvertently create "schools" within one school that vary considerably in their educational quality.

The chief determinant of popularity in high school is:

Those that are well liked (sociometric popularity) and those that have status/prestige (perceived popularity)

One reason that the adolescent years may constitute a difficult period of adjustment is that parents:

The financial demands placed on parents in the "sandwich generation" (that is, sandwiched between their adolescent children and their aging parents) require considerable adjustment. During late childhood and early adolescence, however, the peer group becomes a setting in which close ties are forged, and parents and adolescents often argue about the teenager's reluctance to give up time with friends for family activities.

According to many well-designed studies that have looked at the psychological consequences of growing up with lesbian or gay parents:

There is no evidence whatsoever that children or adolescents with lesbian or gay parents are psychologically different from those with straight parents, a finding that has now been replicated numerous times, across many different domains of psychological development, including gender identity and sexual orientation.

Not only are schools the chief educational arena for adolescents, but they also play an extremely important role in:

defining the young person's social world and in shaping psychosocial development

Marcus feels like his parents don't care about him because they allow him to set his own rules and they seldom provide much support. He even wishes they would punish him because that would at least indicate they are paying attention to him. Marcus's parents would be described best as fitting into which of Baumrind's parenting styles?

indifferent

Max tells his friends that his mother is a "real marshmallow" who does whatever he wants and who never enforces the rules she tries to set. If Max's statement is true, his mother is best characterized as:

indulgent

Adolescents who use aggression deliberately, known as ________, are much more popular than adolescents who use aggression without planning to, known as __________.

instrumental aggression, reactive aggression