Chapter 2
At the heart of brain plasticity are which of the following two concepts?
"Use it or lose it." "Use it and improve it."
Julissa is in Piaget's formal operational stage. What is the best estimate for her age?
14
By the time they are ______, adolescents have the same basic cognitive abilities as adults.
15
Research on autobiographical memory indicates that most people can remember back to when they were only about ______ years old.
2.5
About ______% of teen drivers reported texting while driving.
40
______ is an approach to understanding adolescent risk taking in which behaviors are seen as the outcome of systematic decision-making processes.
Behavioral decision theory
Which of the following is an outcome of synaptic pruning? (Select all that apply.)
Better organization Increased efficiency
Many states have found that graduated drivers licensing (decreases/increases) the incidence of fatal car crashes involving 16-year-olds and (decreased/increases) the incidence of fatal car crashes among 18-year-olds.
Blank 1: decreases Blank 2: increases
Brandon is 16 years old and his brother, Blake, is 26 years old. Which of the following statements about risky behavior is true?
Brandon is more likely than Blake to focus on the potential rewards of risky behavior.
Which of the following is the most common approach for reducing adolescent risk taking?
Classroom-based education programs
In which of the following activities would hypothetical reasoning serve an important function?
Debate
Which of the following adolescents is most likely to engage in risky sexual behavior?
Derick, who is highly responsive to social rewards
Which of the following increases the risk of automobile accidents in adolescence?
Driving alone Driving with teenage passengers
Which of the following situations best represents multidimensional thinking?
Enumerating all of the factors that contributed to the current political situation
Which of the following strategies had led to significant declines in the rate of teen smoking?
Increasing the cost of cigarettes
What happens to an individual's ability to understand sarcasm during adolescence?
It improves considerably due to improved thinking abilities.
Which of the following best characterizes how sensitivity to others' mental states changes in adolescence?
It increases, though these increases are variable for different adolescents.
Which of the following strategies would be most effective in decreasing adolescents' engagement in risky behaviors such as reckless or drunk driving?
Making the legal penalties for these behaviors much more severe
Which of the following adolescents is most likely to engage in risky behavior?
Marty, who is impulsive
often involves monitoring your own cognitive activity during the thinking process.
Metacognition
Which of the following is most important to adolescents understanding of sarcasm?
Multidimensional thinking
Which of the following is an example of an adolescent behavior that affects brain development?
Participating in a training program Using drugs Practicing with a musical instrument
Theorists who adopt a cognitive-developmental view of intellectual development have a ______ perspective.
Piagetian
Which of the following brain structures is most important in adolescents' ability to weigh risks and rewards?
Prefrontal cortex
Identify all of the following skills that are necessary for hypothetical thinking
Providing alternative explanations of events Planning ahead Seeing the future consequences of an action
Which of the following is an adolescent development expert most likely to argue?
Sex differences in brain development should not be used to justify the creation of single-sex schools.
Liv, age 16, has developed the ability to see things as relative. How might this affect Liv's relationship with her parents?
She may question everything her parents say.
According to Vygotsky, which of the following types of tasks fall within the zone of proximal development?
Slightly above-level
Which of the following best explains why children often lack the ability to recognize when a logical problem doesn't provide sufficient information?
They don't often pause before responding to a question.
Which of the following is a criticism of classroom-based education programs designed to teach adolescents about the dangers of various activities?
They may inadvertently increase risk-taking behaviors.
Which of the following contributes to the adolescent's ability to have more sophisticated and more complicated self-conceptions and relationships?
Thinking in multiple dimensions
Which of the following questions would an information-processing researcher ask?
What is it about the way adolescents think that makes them better problem solvers than children?
memory is the ability to remember something for a brief period of time.
Working
Having complex discussions about politics and religion requires ______.
abstract thinking
Imagining that your behavior is the focus of everyone else's attention results in a belief in ______.
an imaginary audience
Sixteen-year-old Quentin fondly remembers the first time he went fishing with his grandfather. Although he was only 4 years old, Quentin caught a 6-pound catfish. Quentin's recollection is an example of ______.
autobiographical memory
memory is the ability to recall personally meaningful events.
autobiographical memory
One study of delinquent youths found that adolescents' criminal activity was more strongly related to their ______.
beliefs about the potential rewards of the activity than to their perceptions of the activity's riskiness
In adolescence, children become ______.
better arguers
Compared to children, adolescents are able to think ______, which means to think about not only how things actually are but also what might have been.
counterfactually
reasoning is a type of logical reasoning in which you draw logically necessary conclusions from a general set of premises, or givens.
deductive
Consider the following problem: "All hockey players wear mouth guards. Kim is a hockey player. Does Kim wear a mouth guard?" Solving this problem requires ______.
deductive reasoning
Rhianna, age 15, is able to draw logically necessary conclusions from a general set of premises. This means Rhianna is capable of ______.
deductive reasoning
The neurotransmitter plays an important role in our experience of reward, while plays an important role in the experience of different moods.
dopamine, serotonin
Adolescent ______ can be described as periods of extreme self-absorption.
egocentrism
Being able to introspect may lead to periods of extreme self-absorption, referred to as adolescent
egocentrism
When presented with others' points of view, adolescents generally ______.
evaluate them against other theoretically possible beliefs
As she has moved through adolescence, 18-year-old Lara has experienced significant gains in self-control and advanced thinking. These gains reflect changes in ______.
executive function
More advanced thinking abilities, enabled chiefly by the maturation of the prefrontal cortex, especially in adolescence, is called ______.
executive functioning
True or false: Maintaining a personal fable of uniqueness undermines adolescents' self-esteem. True false question.
false
True or false: The reminiscence bump only applies to significant, life-altering events, such as one's first love or first time living away from home.
false
True or false: Compared to children, adolescents demonstrate inferior performance on problems assessing deductive reasoning.
false, Adolescents demonstrate superior performance on problems assessing deductive reasoning because they are able to pause a moment before responding to a question.
True or false: Educating adolescents in how to make "better" decisions is the best approach for reducing risk taking.
false, Educating adolescents in how to make better decisions is not likely to reduce risk taking.
True or false: Gains in logical thinking explain the decline in risk taking between adolescence and adulthood.
false, The development of intuitive decision making differentiates adolescents and adults.
Piaget's fourth and final stage of cognitive development is called the ______ stage.
formal
Brain______ refers to patterns of brain activity.
function
The simultaneous recruitment of multiple brain regions working as a "team" is referred to as ______.
functional connectivity
According to Piaget's theory, adolescent thinking is ______ the type of thinking employed by children.
fundamentally different than
After his friend Mike was accused of cheating and received an F on his paper, Caleb remarked, "If I were Mike, I would be really mad. The teacher is convinced he cheated, but I was sitting right next to him and I didn't see anything." Caleb's comments are an example of ______ thinking.
hypothetical
Playing devil's advocate is a form of ______.
hypothetical thinking
Hypothetical reasoning is also called "______" thinking.
if-then
The perspective attempts to explain cognitive development in terms of the growth of specific components of the thinking process.
information processing
Response is the suppression of a behavior that is inappropriate or no longer required.
inhibition
Children's brains are characterized by a large number of relatively "local" connections, but as individuals mature through adolescence into adulthood, more distant regions become increasingly (interconnected/disconnected)
interconnected
When we are ______, we are thinking about how we view ourselves.
introspective
Dopamine and serotonin production are regulated by the system of the brain.
limbic
Better connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the leads to improvements in our ability to regulate our emotions and coordinate our thoughts and feelings.
limbic system
The ______ is an area of the brain that plays an important role in the processing of emotional experience, social information, and reward and punishment.
limbic system
Trey is studying for a science exam and needs to remember the eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Trey comes up with the following mnemonic to help him remember: My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Nectarines. Trey's strategy is an example of ______.
metacognition
According to research on gender differences in brain development, the similarities in brain structure and function are far (more/less) striking than the differences.
more
Adolescents are (more/less) likely to see things as relative.
more
Compared to children, adolescents more often demonstrate ______ thinking.
multidimensional
Children tend to think about things one aspect at a time, while adolescents tend to think about things in ______.
multiple dimensions
An adolescent's belief that he or she is unique and therefore not subject to the rules that govern other people's behavior is called the
personal fable
Jerome recently got his own car. When friends ride in the car, Jerome is reckless. He speeds excessively, flies through stoplights, and cuts drivers off by weaving in and out of traffic. Jerome's friends are now reluctant to ride with him, complaining that he is too dangerous and something bad is going to happen. Jerome just laughs them off, saying, "Seriously? I know how to drive. I'm never going to crash because I know what I'm doing. People who wreck don't know what they're doing." Jerome is demonstrating characteristics of the ______.
personal fable
______ is the capacity of the brain to change in response to experience.
plasticity
During adolescence, pruning of the ______ is dramatic.
prefrontal cortex
The main health problems of adolescence are the result of behaviors that can be
prevented
ccording to behavioral decision theory, decision making is ______ process in which individuals calculate the costs and benefits of alternative courses of action and behave in ways that maximize the benefits and minimize the costs.
rational
For the child, what is possible is what is (possible/real) ; for the adolescent, what is real is just a subset of what is (possible/real)
real, possible
Improvements in intuitive decision-making abilities are associated with
reduced risk taking.
While children view things in black-and-white terms, adolescents see things as (relative/concrete)
relative
The suppression of a behavior that is inappropriate or no longer required is called ______.
response inhibition
Structuring a learning situation so that it is just within the reach of the student is known as
scaffolding
Which of the following describes a teaching intervention that pushes students toward the limits of their skills?
scaffolding
Eighteen-year-old Monica is described by her family and friends as a daredevil. She likes to drive fast, she takes few precautions in her sexual relationships, and she is always looking for an adrenaline rush. Last year, Monica's parents spent nearly a day looking for her when she decided to go kayaking on a flooded river and ended up losing her kayak and swimming in 60-degree water for hours. Monica ______.
scores high in sensation seeking
Martin is able to focus on his mother's voice among many in a crowded room. Martin is demonstrating attention.
selective
When we are ______, we are thinking about how others think about us.
self-conscious
Individuals who are high in reward and seeking are more likely to engage in various types of risky behaviors than their peers.
sensation
The growth of ______ thinking during adolescence is directly related to the young person's improving ability to think abstractly.
social
When does synaptic pruning begin?
soon after birth
Repeated activation of a specific collection of neurons ______ the connections among neurons.
strengthens
Brain is the physical form and organization of the brain.
structure
More-intelligent adolescents have a more dramatic and longer period of production of before adolescence and a more dramatic pruning of them after.
synapses
Changes in specific aspects of IQ performance during adolescence are correlated with ______ in brain regions known to play a role in those specific types of learning.
synaptic pruning
The process through which unnecessary connections between neurons are eliminated, improving the efficiency of information processing, is called
synaptic pruning
When asked to describe herself, 16-year-old McKenzie replies, "I'm shy in big groups of people. But when I'm with my friends, I'm extroverted and outgoing." McKenzie's description reflects ______.
the ability to think in multiple dimensions
Jessie storms down the stairs 20 minutes before she needs to leave for school. She points at her face and yells, "There is no way I'm going to school today! Look at these pimples. Everyone will notice and make fun of me!" Jessie is demonstrating the concept of ______.
the imaginary audience
Gerald arrived at the coliseum to buy concert tickets for himself and his girlfriend. Upon noticing a line with hundreds of people, Gerald pushes his way toward the front, mumbling, "I don't have time for this. I have places to go. People need to get out of the way and let me grab the tickets and go." Gerald is demonstrating ______.
the personal fable
The fact that experiences from adolescence are generally recalled more than experiences from other stages of life is known as ______.
the reminiscence bump
Taylor is in 4th grade and Miguela is in 9th grade. Compared to Taylor, Miguela is more likely to ______.
think about the process of thinking itself
Cells called " " provide support and protection for neurons and compose a fatty substance, called myelin, that surrounds the axons of certain neurons.
white matter