Deck 1: An Introduction to Child Development

Question 1

Variables U and W have a correlation of -0.86. If it is known that Keira has a low score on U, which statement would be the BEST prediction about her score on W?

A)Keira is likely to have a high score on W.
B)Keira is likely to have a low score on W.
C)Keira's score on W is likely to be higher than her score on U.
D)Keira's score on W cannot be predicted from her score on U.

Answer 1

A

Question 2

A class of grade 3 children is split into two groups through random assignment. Group A is given training in a new game, and group B is not. Group A is referred to as the _____ group, and group B is referred to as the _____ group.

A)dependent; independent
B)independent; dependent
C)control; experimental
D)experimental; control

Answer 2

D

Question 3

A class of grade 3 children is split into two groups through random assignment. Group A is given training in a new game, and group B is not. Training in the new game is referred to as the _____ variable, and game-playing skill at the conclusion of the study is referred to as the _____ variable.

A)dependent; independent
B)independent; dependent
C)control; experimental
D)experimental; control

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Which premise is at the foundation of the scientific method?

A)If a hypothesis is repeatedly tested and found incorrect, it must be abandoned.
B)Some hypotheses cannot be tested scientifically.
C)Beliefs that are plausible to many experts are assumed to be accurate.
D)The scientific method is founded on all of these.

Question 5

The validity of a test refers to the

A)consistency of the test.
B)extent to which two raters agree on its result.
C)degree to which it measures what it is intended to measure.
D)level of agreement between different observers of the same behaviour.

Question 6

To examine the effect of empathy training on teenagers' bullying behaviours, a researcher splits a group of high school students into two groups through random assignment. Group A is shown a movie about an interesting science experiment, and group B is shown a movie about students being harmed by bullies. Group A would be the _____ group, and group B would be the _____ group.

A)dependent; independent
B)independent; dependent
C)control; experimental
D)experimental; control

Question 7

A correlation of -1.00 indicates that

A)there is no relationship between the two variables.
B)the two variables increase together.
C)the two variables decrease together.
D)as one variable increases, the other variable decreases.

Question 8

The external validity of a measure involves the extent to which

A)the effects of an experiment are truly due to conditions the researcher intended to manipulate.
B)different observers of the same behaviour agree.
C)the results of a study will hold when studies are conducted with different participants and methods.
D)independent measurements of a given behaviour are consistent.

Question 9

Which factor is an example of how children shape their own development?

A)play style
B)socioeconomic status
C)number of siblings
D)all of these

Question 10

Freud developed the _____ development.

A)psychosexual stages of
B)psychosocial stages of
C)theory of moral
D)theory related to child cognitive

Question 11

Who developed the baby biography?

A)Darwin
B)Locke
C)Freud
D)Watson

Question 12

Test-retest reliability refers to the

A)level of agreement between different observers of the same behaviour.
B)improvement of children over time in abilities such as mathematics.
C)degree to which a test measures what it is intended to test.
D)degree of similarity in the results of the same measure when it is given at two different times.

Question 13

Which expression is MOST likely to represent the correlation between age of child and reading speed among children who are able to read?

A)1.00
B)0.60
C)0
D)-0.60

Question 14

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?

A)minority status
B)maternal involvement
C)family income level
D)paternal education level

Question 15

Considering the research on preschoolers' ability to provide accurate testimony about past events, which piece of advice would be the MOST important for an interviewer to be told prior to interviewing a young child?

A)Bring a doll to aid the child in answering your questions.
B)Make sure you know the answers to the questions before asking the child.
C)If you do not think the child has answered a question accurately, ask the question again.
D)Ask questions that will help children to testify accurately.

Question 16

Which statement about epigenetics is TRUE?

A)One's hereditary information stays constant throughout life.
B)One's DNA can be altered by experience.
C)Early experiences can alter the expression of one's genes.
D)All of these statements are true.

Question 17

To examine the effectiveness of empathy training on children's sharing behaviour, 2 months of training are provided to 3-year-old children living in rural Georgia. Six months later, the children's sharing behaviours are measured and compared to their pretraining sharing behaviour. Improvements are considered the result of the empathy training. Which factor is a potential source of internal invalidity?

A)All the children were from rural Georgia.
B)Children's sharing behaviour may improve with the simple passage of time.
C)The observers of the sharing behaviour may disagree.
D)Children who were the best sharers before the training were not necessarily the best after the training.

Question 18

Rachel is a 6-month-old who has recently learned to sit up on her own. Her mother places two toys in front of her: a soft yellow stuffed animal within her reach and a colourful rattle slightly out of her reach. Seeing both toys, Rachel chooses the one she finds more appealing to play with. Over time, choices such as these do NOT influence development of

A)personality.
B)crawling.
C)an understanding of cause and effect.
D)gross motor skills.

Question 19

Based on current research findings, which person is MOST likely to develop schizophrenia?

A)Stacey, whose first cousin suffers from the disorder
B)Margaret, whose grandfather suffers from the disorder
C)Brandon, whose father suffers from the disorder
D)Michael, whose sister suffers from the disorder

Question 20

Which type of design compares the behaviour of groups of children who are of different ages?

A)microgenetic
B)cross-sectional
C)landscape
D)longitudinal

Question 21

Stella has experienced poverty her entire life. Which is NOT an aspect related to cumulative risk that puts Stella at risk for hindered successful development?

A)attending an inferior day-care centre
B)increased exposure to pollution
C)attending an A-rated school
D)residing in a single-parent home

Question 22

The relationship between the influence of nature and nurture on developmental outcomes can BEST be described by which statement?

A)Nature has more influential on developmental outcomes than nurture does.
B)Nurture has more influential on developmental outcomes than nature does.
C)There is a bidirectional interaction between nature and nurture that influences developmental outcomes.
D)There is no relationship between the influence of nature and nurture on developmental outcomes.

Question 23

Kochanska and her colleagues probably chose to study toddlers' compliance with their mothers' requests with the methodology they used because

A)children tend to feel most comfortable in their own homes.
B)they wanted all children to be exposed to identical situations.
C)they were interested in children's subjective experiences of the event.
D)of all of these factors.

Question 24

A method for combining the results from independent studies to determine a general conclusion on the topic is known as

A)meta-analysis.
B)factor analysis.
C)longitudinal design.
D)cross-sectional design.

Question 25

Which factor is NOT considered part of the sociocultural context?

A)neighbourhood
B)societal values
C)historical era
D)genes

Question 26

Which research design has the GREATEST limitations when attempting to study many variables of interest at the same time?

A)correlational
B)experimental
C)cross-sectional
D)longitudinal

Question 27

Attributes that vary across individuals and situations are termed

A)variables.
B)correlates.
C)causes.
D)coefficients.

Question 28

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

A)structured
B)correlational
C)experimental
D)none of these

Question 29

Which group has stressed the general learning mechanisms that are thought to be possessed by infants?

A)nativists
B)evolutionary psychologists
C)empiricists
D)Freudians

Question 30

Which example illustrates discontinuity in development?

A)the transition from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly
B)trees growing taller each year
C)the blooming of flowers
D)the cultivation of crops each fall

Question 31

Recent research conducted by Ferguson (2015) and Furuya-Kanamori and Doi (2016) concluded what regarding the impact of playing violent video games on childhood and adolescent aggression?

A)Their results indicated a direct link between the two.
B)They found that those who play fewer violent video games demonstrated increased prosocial behaviours.
C)Their results were inconclusive.
D)They concluded that the effect of playing violent video games on childhood and adolescent aggression were minimal.

Question 32

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

A)naturalistic interview
B)structured interview
C)naturalistic observation
D)structured observation

Question 33

Which variable is LEAST likely to be an independent variable in an experiment?

A)TV-viewing behaviour
B)family size
C)hours of teacher training
D)parental involvement in school

Question 34

Which scenario provides the BEST example of how children actively contribute to their own development?

A)Joshua's bright blue eyes cause strangers to shower him with attention, which influences his wariness around strangers.
B)Analisa's mother's anxiety about her daughter's academic success causes Analisa to panic whenever she takes an exam.
C)Manny's quiet nature influences him to seek out other quiet children, with whom he plays quiet games, and to stay away from the more rambunctious children in his class.
D)Bree's parents are both highly educated and surround her with books and puzzles, leading Bree to be an intellectually curious child.

Question 35

A researcher is interested in the development of depression. She interviews children ages 5, 9, and 13 about their depressive symptoms. This is an example of which type of design?

A)longitudinal
B)experimental
C)microgenetic
D)cross-sectional

Question 36

Which is NOT an ethical standard to which psychological researchers are expected to adhere?

A)assisting participants to improve on the variables of interest
B)obtaining informed consent
C)counteracting negative outcomes of research
D)preserving participants' anonymity

Question 37

Which activity is NOT a core component of effortful attention?

A)exerting effort on tasks
B)controlling emotions
C)focusing attention
D)inhibiting impulses

Question 38

Third-variable problems are an issue with which type of research design?

A)correlational
B)experimental
C)cross-sectional
D)longitudinal

Question 39

One study discussed in the text demonstrated that the grades of children who were highly engaged in school changed in more positive directions than would have been predicted by genetic background or family environment alone. This finding is MOST supportive of the theory of

A)Watson.
B)Johnson.
C)Dweck.
D)Piaget.

Question 40

Which statement BEST answers the question of whether development is fundamentally continuous or discontinuous?

A)Development is fundamentally continuous.
B)Development is fundamentally discontinuous.
C)Some domains of development, such as cognitive development, are fundamentally discontinuous, whereas other domains, such as social development, are fundamentally continuous.
D)Whether development is fundamentally continuous or discontinuous depends on perspective-how development is examined as well as how often it is examined.

Question 41

The term "reliability" does NOT refer to the

A)consistency of measurements.
B)similarity in results when a variable is measured at two different time points.
C)ability to generalize measurements.
D)level of agreement in observations by different observers.

Question 42

The accumulation of disadvantages over years of development is referred to as

A)methylation.
B)genome.
C)effortful attention.
D)cumulative risk.

Question 43

Which brain structure is particularly important for learning and memory?

A)hippocampus
B)amygdala
C)hypothalamus
D)pons

Question 44

Darwin completed a biographical sketch of his own son, demonstrating his interest in child development, in what was called

A)evolutionary theory.
B)the psychosexual stages of development.
C)the psychosocial stages of development.
D)the baby biography.

Question 45

A town committee learns that there is a strong negative correlation between the number of millimetres of daily rainfall and the number of children who use the neighbourhood playgrounds each day. If the committee were to conclude that high rainfall is caused by children not using the playground, which type of problem would MOST likely be occurring?

A)third-variable
B)direction-of-correlation
C)direction-of-causation
D)insufficient-knowledge

Question 46

The extent to which two variables are related is referred to as their

A)causal direction.
B)coefficient.
C)relativity.
D)correlation.

Question 47

A researcher is interested in thoroughly exploring 8-year-old Jane's thoughts and feelings about living in poverty. The researcher's BEST option for obtaining this information would be

A)a clinical interview.
B)a structured interview.
C)naturalistic observation.
D)structured observation.

Question 48

A researcher is interested in examining whether offering children candy as an incentive to share will increase preschoolers' sharing behaviour. 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?

A)Children in group A may have been naturally kinder than were children in group B.
B)Causation cannot be inferred from this type of study.
C)These findings may not generalize beyond the laboratory setting.
D)There may be a third-variable problem.

Question 49

A study that examines the lying behaviour of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds is utilizing which type of design?

A)cross-sectional
B)microgenetic
C)experimental
D)longitudinal

Question 50

Which basic step of the scientific method is unique to that method?

A)forming a hypothesis
B)developing a method to test the hypothesis
C)asking a question
D)drawing a conclusion

Question 51

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

A)dividing participants by hair colour
B)allowing participants to choose which group to join
C)dividing participants by where their names fall on an alphabetic list
D)flipping a coin for each participant

Question 52

Research studies engaging in _____ designs often reveal that rare or nonexistent practices in one's own culture are common in other cultures.

A)cross-sectional
B)longitudinal
C)cross-cultural
D)experimental

Question 53

In which country are infants expected to sleep in their own bed, separate from their parents, by 6 months of age?

A)Japan
B)South Korea
C)Canada
D)Mexico

Question 54

Stage theories regard development as

A)active.
B)passive.
C)continuous.
D)discontinuous.

Question 55

Which statement about the study on the development of popularity discussed in the text is true?

A)The microgenetic design allowed for conclusions to be made about age-related changes in popularity.
B)The cross-sectional design allowed for age-related differences among children in popularity to be examined.
C)The longitudinal design allowed for the investigation of how changes in popularity occur.
D)The longitudinal design allowed for the stability of individual differences to be examined.

Question 56

Of Aristotle, Locke, and Plato, which philosopher(s) believed that all knowledge comes from experience, meaning that infants are born without innate knowledge?

A)Locke only
B)Plato only
C)Aristotle and Locke only
D)Plato and Aristotle only

Question 57

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

A)increases; decreases
B)increases; stays the same
C)decreases; decreases
D)decreases; stays the same

Question 58

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

A)the womb
B)the house we live in
C)the elementary school we attend
D)our parents' interaction with us

Question 59

Which statement expresses a disadvantage of naturalistic observation?

A)Memory of participants for past events is often inaccurate and incomplete.
B)It can feel artificial to the participants.
C)Reports are often biased to reflect favourably on the participants.
D)It has a limited value for studying infrequent behaviours.

Question 60

Longitudinal designs are particularly useful for examining

A)continuity and discontinuity in development.
B)age differences on a particular variable.
C)the processes that produce changes.
D)cause-and-effect relationships.

Question 61

Which statement qualifies as a hypothesis?

A)Children whose parents argue in their presence are more likely than other children to try illegal drugs.
B)Which parental behaviours are associated with an increased likelihood of teenage illegal drug use?
C)What are the differences between children whose parents argue in their presence and those whose parents do not argue in their presence?
D)There are many differences between children whose parents argue in their presence and those whose parents do not argue in their presence.

Question 62

The term used for the social class measure based on income and education is

A)race.
B)socioeconomic status.
C)culture.
D)sociocultural context.

Question 63

Which factor is NOT one identified by Scarr (1992) that can lead children from the same family to turn out very differently from each other?

A)genetic similarities
B)differences in treatment by family members
C)different environmental conditions
D)differences in reactions to similar experiences

Question 64

What was demonstrated by the study on toddlers' play behaviours in which the TV show Jeopardy! was being shown in the room while the children were playing?

A)Toddlers' play behaviour is unaffected by background exposure to TV.
B)Toddlers are likely to choose watching TV, rather than playing, even when the toys are interesting.
C)Background exposure to TV is disruptive to toddlers, even if they watch little of the show.
D)Toddlers are able to learn from TV if the items in the room are compatible with the content of the TV show.

Question 65

One main conclusion based on the Romanian adoption study is that

A)development is a direct result of sociocultural experiences.
B)there is no impact of social experiences on the developmental process.
C)the timing of experiences influences their effect on development.
D)development is a general result of biological influences.

Question 66

The study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the environment is referred to as

A)epigenetics.
B)evolutionary psychology.
C)neuroscience.
D)genometrics.

Question 67

Romanian-born children who were adopted by British families _____ fared BEST in weight gain after adoption.

A)before age 6 months
B)between the ages of 6 and 24 months
C)between the ages of 24 and 42 months
D)after 42 months

Question 68

Which statement is NOT part of the logic of experimental designs?

A)Two or more groups of participants vary on one or more variables at the outset.
B)The participants within one group are given an experience that differs in only one way from the experience given to participants in the other group.
C)The participants in different groups behave differently after the experiences.
D)The different experiences are concluded to have caused the subsequent difference in behaviour.

Question 69

According to the text, differences between U.S. and Mayan childhood sleeping patterns are due to differences in

A)laws.
B)financial circumstances.
C)cultural values.
D)family structure.

Question 70

What is a hypothesis?

A)a research question
B)a conclusion yielded by research
C)a method used to answer a question
D)a testable prediction

Question 71

A correlation coefficient of 0.00 indicates that as the level of one variable increases, the level of the other variable

A)increases.
B)decreases.
C)varies randomly.
D)stays constant.

Question 72

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

A)Knowledge regarding child development can help caregivers raise children.
B)Research on child development can aid social policy development and adoption.
C)Knowledge of child development can provide a more thorough understand of human nature.
D)Research on child development can assist the development of court orders regarding child custody.

Question 73

Longitudinal design would be appropriate to examine

A)the typical pattern of age-related changes in a particular skill.
B)the pattern of stability and change in individual children's development in a particular area.
C)how change in a particular skill occurs.
D)all of these.

Question 74

Which is a major group of contemporary philosophers and psychologists that argue for the importance and relevance of evolution in relation to human development?

A)nativists
B)evolutionary psychologists
C)empiricists
D)Freudians

Question 75

Suppose a researcher found 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?

A)third-variable
B)direction-of-correlation
C)direction-of-causation
D)insufficient-knowledge

Question 76

The possibility that the correlation between two variables may actually be the result of an additional unspecified attribute is referred to as the _____ problem.

A)insufficient-variable
B)third-variable
C)experimental-design
D)direction-of-causation

Question 77

Variables X and Y are negatively correlated, indicating that as the level of X increases, the level of Y _____, and as the level of X decreases, the level of Y _____.

A)increases; increases
B)increases; decreases
C)decreases; increases
D)decreases; decreases

Question 78

Which factor is the GREATEST obstacle to poor children's chances of successful development?

A)accumulation of various disadvantages
B)growing up in a single-parent home or without biological parents
C)lack of parental involvement in their schooling
D)genetic disadvantages

Question 79

A longitudinal design would be MOST useful for which research question?

A)Are older children better than younger children at playing hopscotch?
B)What are the similarities and differences in the TV-viewing habits of elementary school students and junior high school students?
C)Do children who are empathetic preschoolers become empathetic teenagers?
D)How do children learn to solve jigsaw puzzles?

Question 80

Which statement BEST characterizes the results of research on children from Romanian orphanages?

A)Positive experiences in later childhood cannot counteract the effect of negative early childhood experiences.
B)Positive experiences in later childhood counteract the effect of negative early childhood experiences.
C)The impact of positive experiences on children's resiliency depends on the timing and extent of the neglect.
D)Neglect in infancy always has severe and lasting consequences.