Exam 1: An Introduction to Child Development

Which item is NOT one of the four factors Scarr identified as involved in the differences among siblings?

Which statement is NOT a general reason to learn about child development, as outlined in the text?

Which is the GREATEST limitation of laboratory experiments?

To examine how children interact with their elementary school teachers on a daily basis, a researcher would probably use the _____ method.

Freud developed the _____ development.

Which example illustrates discontinuity in development?

Which research design fails to provide data regarding change over time?

A researcher is interested in examining whether offering children candy as an incentive to share will increase preschoolers' sharing behavior. A group of preschoolers is brought into the laboratory to play with some interesting toys. The preschoolers are split into two groups through random assignment. Group A is told that they will get candy each time they share, and group B is not told anything about candy or sharing. Results indicate that preschoolers in group A share more than do preschoolers in group B, and the researcher concludes that offering children candy for sharing caused the children in group A to share more. Which statement BEST describes a possible limitation of this study?

Dr. Schmidt is studying the effectiveness of a new reading program on minority children who have experienced an impoverished family background and low maternal involvement. She will separate children into two groups; one that gets the new reading program and one that uses the current reading program. She will also use random assignment to create her two groups. The groups created in this manner would NOT be comparable with regard to which characteristic?

To examine his hypothesis that children's creativity levels decrease with age, Dr. Leno asks children how many imaginary friends they have and considers their answers to be a measure of their creativity. A second researcher, Dr. Letterman, disagrees that the answers are a measure of creativity and instead believes that the number of imaginary friends a child has is an indicator of level of mental disturbance. Dr. Letterman believes Dr. Leno's measure of creativity has a problem with its

All demonstrate nature's influence on our development EXCEPT

The text describes several reasons for the importance of studying child development. Why is studying child development of interest or importance to you personally?

Which is likely the first environmental influence on development that we encounter?

Suppose a researcher found out that there was a strong positive correlation between the number of minutes parents spend reading to children and the number of minutes parents spend engaging in athletic activity with children. If the researcher concluded that engaging in high levels of athletic activity with children causes parents to read to them more often, which type of problem would MOST likely be occurring?

The term "reliability" does NOT refer to the

External validity is an issue in which research design, due to repeatedly testing the same children?

Which method is the BEST way to divide participants into groups for an experiment?

Variables A and B are positively correlated, indicating that as the level of A _____, the level of B _____.

Describe what ethical issues researchers must consider when they are conducting research with children.

Which research design allows researchers to infer cause-and-effect associations between variables?