Exam 1 Practice Quiz
What surrounds and protects neurons, and influences communication among neurons by helping in the formation and strengthening of synapses?
glial cells
Marcus was just given something new to eat by his mother. Upon tasting it, his lips immediately puckered, and his mouth produced saliva. Marcus' mom likely gave Marcus something that was _______ flavored.
sour
_______ appear(s) to adjust in line with human experience and can serve to accelerate or delay the opening of a sensitive period.
brain plasticity
The transition from babbling to using words can be considered an example of _______ change.
qualitative
Gradual changes in an infant's ability to move is an example of _______ change.
quantitative
Klinefelter syndrome and Turner syndrome provide evidence that
random negative mutations can occur.
During the time when a woman's egg leaves an ovary and travels into the fallopian tube, is when the egg
releases a chemical substance that attracts a man's sperm.
Gait-mats are useful to assess infant walking ability, however they are limited in that they
require infants to walk in a straight line.
_______is (are) characteristic of the first stage of labor, while _______ is (are) characteristic of the second stage of labor.
Contractions; pushing
Which of the following best illustrates how infants' ability to perceive color is different from adults'?
Infants categorize colors in the same way as do adults.
What might be an outcome of an infant being exposed to heroin prenatally?
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
A developmental scientist hypothesizes that children learn language at such young ages because the brain guides learning through "regions" innately dedicated to language. Which idea best characterizes this type of theory?
Top-down explanation of development
All of the following muscle groups play a central role in the infant's ability to sit unaided and without supports except the
arms
A pregnant mother who spends more than half of her time sedentary behaviors during pregnancy is more likely to
have amacrosomic infant
During the embryonic period, cells of the embryo begin to fold into three layers. The layer that contains cells for bone tissue is called the
mesoderm
The death of superfluous neuronal connections is referred to as
pruning
Research in brain growth and functioning has led to greater understanding of why some children are _______, while others suffer great harm under adverse environmental conditions.
resilient
Learning a language is substantially easier up until the age of 12. This is evidence of
sensitive periods
Scientists' ability to locate a gene thought to be involved in an inherited disease has greatly increased because of
the human genome project
When viewing objects at different distances, the lens of the eye automatically changes shape in a process known as
visual accommodation.
What process occurs during the prenatal period that assists the development of the digestive system?
The fetus swallows amniotic fluid regularly.
A reason that an infant may experience anoxia can be due to
a baby being in the breech position
A child is overtly scolded by nonresponsive parents often. In adolescence, the child begins to form relationships with peers who demonstrate antisocial, even violent behaviors. This example demonstrates
cascades over time
Maternal malnourishment may lead to fetal growth retardation and low birth weight due to
"starvation" signals to the fetus that food is likely to be scarce in the future.
Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development is best characterized by which example?
A child counts to five, but the teacher helps the child count a few more numbers to 10.
Which finding is consistent with the theory that regions of the brain specialized for experience-expectant plasticity are not necessarily locked into their "expected" paths of development?
A deaf child's auditory processing areas become specialized for visual processing.
In 2013, the U.S. government launched the _______ to encourage scientific discovery of new tools and methods to study the brain.
BRAIN initiative
As an infant, Sarah began to hold her head up before she was able to balance her torso. Developing the ability to hold her head up before developing the ability to balance her torso is a demonstration of what principle of growth?
Cephalocaudal development
Which has not been proposed as a likely reason for the relatively high infant mortality rates in the United States?
Changes in access to health care, clean water, and nutrition over the twentieth century
Why might children be influenced by physical and/or social settings, customs, beliefs, and views of caregivers in their home?
Children's learning is shaped by the cultural context.
Mai and Clifton are both sitting upright on an experimenter's lap and are presented with an interesting toy that is slightly beyond their reach. Although Clifton attempts to lean forward to grab the object, Mai does not, knowing it is too far away. Based on your knowledge of the development of reaching, you could conclude that
Clifton is likely younger than Mai.
Lilly and Max are dizygotic twins. A doctor once explained to their parents that Max has a higher chance of inheriting color blindness than Lilly. Why would that be?
Color blindness is a sex-linked trait associated with the X chromosome.
Reya is 30 months old. During art class, she has crayons, a sheet of regular paper, and a sheet of paper that is covered in plastic and wet. What is she likely to do?
Color the paper because the surface allows the colors to show but the wet plastic does not
A researcher wants to measure the frequency of cyberbullying at different grade levels at an elementary school. Which type of study should be applied?
Cross-sectional study
A researcher wishes to study the electrical brain activity of infants as they process stimuli. They are likely to use which technology to record the electrical activity in the surface of infants' brains?
EEG
While pregnant, Chloe suffered from depression. Her infant is likely to exhibit which of the following characteristics?
Elevated heart rate, suppressed motor activity, high irritability
Which of the following statements correctly summarizes the contribution of Thelen's research to the understanding of infant motor development?
Factors such as weight and muscle mass can impact the type of behaviors that infants display.
Aiden's parents consistently placed him on his tummy whenever he went to sleep. Gertrude, on the other hand, was consistently placed on her back. Based on the findings from the Back-to-Sleep campaign, it is likely that
Gertrude will likely be delayed compared to Aiden in skills related to related to rolling over, sitting, and crawling.
All studies involving humans must be reviewed by an institutional review board (IRB). Which of the following is an accurate reflection of IRB standards?
If there is a need for deception, participants must be debriefed after the study.
A child is attempting to gain math competency to keep up with the class. According to Erikson's psychosocial stage theory, this child is experiencing conflict from which stage?
Industry vs inferiority
In a series of studies, Vouloumanos and Werker (2004) examined speech sound preferences in infants. Which of following results would be consistent with their conclusion that preference for speech begins before a baby is even born?
Infants as young as 4 days old already showed a preference for speech over nonspeech sounds.
Which of these scenarios best illustrates the concept of perceptual narrowing?
Infants raised by their fathers show greater ability to distinguish among male faces compared to female faces.
Which is an accurate description of the hindbrain?
It is responsible for regulating many basic life functions such as heart rate and digestion.
Which of the following examples would support Myrtle McGraw's conclusion of how early environmental experiences contribute to infant motor development?
Lucy's swimming lessons as a young child would likely result in her experiencing greater coordination in such skills throughout her life.
How do we know that infants remember the sounds that they heard prenatally?
Mothers read passages from Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat during pregnancy, and after birth their babies increased their sucking rate to the passages.
Bridget and Theo are parents of an infant. A friend encourages them to buy a learning system for their infant, citing the "use it or lose it" concept of maintaining existing neural connections. Is this the best advice?
No, pruning away excess neurons will improve the child's neural communication.
As an infant, Bryan started using his hands to grasp objects with his whole hand before he was able to use his fingers to press small buttons and turn knobs. The ability to grasp objects before being able to use fingers individually is an example of what principle of growth?
Proximodistal development
Why might qualitative research allow for more depth in understanding a phenomenon?
Qualitative research draws out participants' experiences from their perspectives, rather than preguided hypotheses.
Jess was born with cataracts in both eyes. Considering brain-expectant plasticity, which is the best course of action?
Remove the cataracts during infancy, as removing them after infancy increases the chance of visual impairments.
A researcher wants to identify leading causes of adolescent use of vaping. Which statement could serve as a hypothesis?
Teens will start vaping due to initial pressure by friends and peers.
Middle schoolers participated in a sex education and health program early in the year. They were tested at the end of the program to measure what they retained. A week later, they were tested again to see if individual children received similar scores. Which type of reliability is being assessed?
Test-retest reliability
Infants were initially habituated to the category "vehicles" by being shown images of different cars and trucks. Following this, they were shown a picture of a school bus next to a picture of an apple. Based on your knowledge of how infants form categories for different objects, which of the following statements would best illustrate how infants would respond?
They would look less at the school bus compared to the apple, having grouped the bus as a type of vehicle.
Six-year-old Maya was involved in a car accident. The doctors mentioned that Maya has some swelling of her occipital lobe. Which of these might be affected with an injury to this part of the brain?
Vision
Talia took the drug Thalidomide while pregnant in 1958. The probability that her infant will suffer deformities because of exposure to this drug would depend on which factor?
Whether the mother took the drug during the period that exposes the fetus to harm
Early philosopher John Locke viewed children as a tabula rasa, meaning they were
a blank slate
A developmental systems theorist is most likely to hold that human behavior is shaped by
a wide range of factors, including biology and environment.
In contrast to cultural practices of sleep in the United States, the Kipsigi community in rural Kenya practice
allow infants to take many naps and wake several times throughout the night to nurse on demand.
A child is confronted by an unfamiliar barking dog. The child's heart starts to race as he runs away. Which part of the brain helps prepare for this response to a fearful situation?
amygdala
According to the Gestalt theory of perception, infants' perceptual skills would result in
an adultlike capacity to organize visual stimuli into meaningful patterns.
Electrical impulses travel from the cell body to _______ where neurotransmitters are released to send signals to other neurons.
axon terminals
Makena is a 5-month-old infant born to Kenyan parents who recently immigrated to the United States. Based on your knowledge of the role of cultural norms on motor development in infants, you would predict that Makena will
be ahead of her same-aged peers in some motor milestones related to sitting and standing provided that her parents continue to embrace Kenyan cultural norms of child-rearing.
One week after conception, a ball of 100 cells becomes firmly embedded in the lining of the uterus in the process of implantation. This ball of cells is called the
blastocyst
Which approach would limit the generalizability of study findings to the population of interest?
convenience sampling
Cruising behavior in infants is functionally similar to _______ behavior because of the heavy reliance on _______.
crawling; muscles in the arms
The part of a neuron responsible for receiving neural transmissions is the
dendrite
Champagne and Meaney's study of rat licking provided evidence that
early experience may alter gene expression.
Darius and Xavier are identical twins. At age 20, Darius was diagnosed with cancer but recovered with treatment. The two men are now 50 years old and Xavier has never been diagnosed with cancer. What concept might explain this difference?
epigenetics
Hubel and Wiesel's experiments with kittens helped to better understand
experience-expectant plasticity.
Yumi was shown a drawing of a bicycle. After habituating to this first image, she was then presented with a second picture of the same bicycle behind a gate, with its front wheel being blocked. Yumi's recognition of the partially perceived bicycle as being identical to the whole image is an indication of the Gestalt concept of
good continuation
Jackson's mother presented him with a new toy, a colorful rattler. At first, Jackson stared intently at the toy, but after attending to it for a few minutes, he began to look away, and eventually did not show interest in the toy at all. Jackson's behavior would signal that he had
habituated to the toy.
A main benefit due to the process of myelination is the
improvement in the conductivity of the nerve impulses.
The spread or variability among children in various aspects of development is called
individual differences.
The ecological theory of perception proposed a significant departure from earlier views on infant perceptual development because the theory emphasized the
infant's role in piecing together dynamic, visual experiences in their environment in a way that allowed them to make sense of their experiences.
Henry is being fed by his mother. Each time her mouth moves, he hears sounds ("Open wide! This is yummy!") and then feels the cold, smooth texture of the food in his mouth. After each bite of food, he hears the spoon lightly tapping against the applesauce container as his mother prepares another bite of food for him. Henry's integration of these experiences into an understanding of being fed is an example of
intermodel perception
The placement of a man's sperm into a woman's uterus using a long, narrow tube, which is sometimes used to address infertility, is referred to as
intrauterine insemination (IUI).
An experiment that follows the same group of children over a period of time is called a _______ study.
longitudinal
A condition in which an infant is born with an abnormally small head and brain is called
microcephaly.
A researcher has designed a study that will involve obtaining frequent, closely spaced observations of children. This is a _______ study.
microgenetic
Imani grew up in a region of Africa where malaria is prevalent. Many in her community that have lived there for generations seem to have increased resistance to the disease compared to families who have recently moved to the area. However, others moved away from Africa to areas without malaria where the gene was not needed to protect against the disease. This instance is an example of a
mixed mutation
Ainsley was looking out the window of her parents' car as they were taking a trip to the beach. To her eyes, it appeared as though the trees and fences nearest to the car went past her very quickly, but the large clouds overhead moved very slowly, a phenomenon known as
motion parallax.
Danika's mom is angry on the phone, raises her voice, and yells before slamming the phone down. Later, Danika's mom sees Danika yelling at her doll for being late and abruptly pushing the doll onto the floor. This is an example of
observational learning
Rutter (1981) conducted a study on children from an orphanage: When infants received adequate care in adoptive homes, they became more affectionate, more cheerful. This is an example of
plasticity—infants can adapt and even change in response to improved environments or experiences.
The Apgar scale is an assessment of newborn health and is based on ratings including neonate
pulse, grimace, and respiration.
Jeremy and Sam are identical twins. However, Sam is slightly taller than Jeremy. Differences such as this
show differences in phenotype.
The main difference between premature infants and small-for-date infants is that
small-for-date infants weigh less than expected at birth based on the time they spent in the womb.
Jessica is watching from her playpen as her mother plays on the piano. Every time her mother moves her fingers on the keyboard, a sound is made. Jessica is able to connect her mother's fingers on the keyboard to the sounds that she hears because of
temporal synchrony
A large influence on U.S. parents' avoidance of co-sleeping with their infant stems from
the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation for infants not to share a bed to minimize the risk of SIDS.
Stable posture affects all of the following except
the ability of the infant's eyes to focus on near and distant objects.
Comparisons of siblings who were versus were not breastfed has revealed that
the benefits of breastmilk may be overstated and confounded by other family factors.
A boy brings a doll everywhere he goes. He sees other boys playing with blocks and never dolls. The boy puts his doll away and joins the other boys. According to Bandura, the boy did this because
the boy learned that other boys prefer playing with blocks to dolls and chose to do the same.
A child in a remote village in Brazil may not understand basic math concepts because the language does not have words for numbers. This reflects a cultural influence on
the form a skill takes
The nature-nurture seesaw is best summarized by which of the following?
Degree to which genes and/or the environment influences individuals must be considered.
Being able to detect a sound is defined as _______ threshold, whereas being able to detect that a change in sound occurred from a first sound to a second sound is called _______ threshold.
absolute; difference
A university class practiced writing cover letters all semester. To test what they learned about letter-writing, the final essay asks them to write about ways to job search. This violates _______ validity.
face
Which of the following structures in the retina is responsible for determining the overall visual acuity of infants?
fovea
When 2-month-olds listened to the speech of their mother or a stranger, the left hemisphere of the brain activated. But, when they listened to music, both areas activated. Such evidence illustrates
how differences in density of neurons in certain brain regions make them suited to the processing of speech
An evolutionary argument for how the adaptive response to maternal stress may aid a fetus to survive postnatally includes the idea that
prenatal exposure to cortisol can affect infant negativity and later aggression which may help children compete for resources and cope with a hostile and threatening world.
Molly and her mother are playing with several different size balls in their living room. With the small balls, Molly has learned how to grasp them in her hands and throw them back towards her mother. With the larger balls however, when Molly attempts to grasp them, as she touches and tries to hold them, she finds it is too difficult to do. As a result, she switches to rolling them back and forth. Which concept explains Molly's behavior?
perception-action feedback loop
The weeks that precede and follow an infant's birth is known as the
perinatal period
_______ refers to the perception of an object as having a constant size despite changes in the size of the retinal image, whereas _______ refers to the perception of an object as having a constant shape despite changes to the retinal image.
size constancy; shape constancy
A child has the impulse to hit other children when he gets upset. However, the child realizes such behaviors are inappropriate and unacceptable, and therefore the child refrains from hitting. According to Freud's theory, the
superego is imposing societal demands on the id.
The brain's volume gradually increases over childhood through the processes of
synaptogenesis and myelination.