Deck 1: Beliefs About Babies: Historical Perspectives on Children and Childhood

Question 1

What is the definition of the following terms?
-Continuous

Answer 1

Characterization of development as a gradual, smooth process of change.

Question 2

What is the definition of the following terms?
-Infant mortality rate

Answer 2

Number of deaths per 1,000 live births, usually reported with reference to the age of 1 year.

Question 3

What is the definition of the following terms?
-Infant school movement

Answer 3

An early nineteenth-century movement, imported to the United States from Europe, in which educators believed that children as young as 18 months could be educated and taught to read.

Question 4

What is the definition of the following terms?
-Literary evidence

Question 5

What is the definition of the following terms?
-Material culture

Question 6

What is the definition of the following terms?
-Nature

Question 7

What is the definition of the following terms?
-Nurture

Question 8

What is the definition of the following terms?
-Oblation

Question 9

What is the definition of the following terms?
-Quantitative archival evidence

Question 10

What is the definition of the following terms?
-Stagewise

Question 11

All of the following are reasons cited in the text to study infants except

A) the first three years are a time of significant transformation in every developmental domain
B) the effects of adversity that occurs before the age of three are less permanent than adversity that occurs at later ages
C) more research tools and information are available to guide inquiry than at any previous time
D) there is heightened interest in interdisciplinary collaboration

Question 12

Which of the following is the newest reason to study infants, among the reasons cited in the text?

A) The ability to communicate through language emerges during the first three years.
B) By three to four months of age, initially immobile infants roll over.
C) Infants who are born preterm are more likely than ever before to survive.
D) Pediatricians are interested in studying the conditions under which infants thrive.

Question 13

Interdisciplinary collaboration in the study of infant development would be illustrated by all of the following except

A) early childhood educators working with economists
B) stage theorists sharing data with researchers who endorse a more continuous view of development
C) historians and pediatricians investigating trends in infant mortality rates
D) geneticists studying delays in early language acquisition

Question 14

All of the following were themes of development discussed in the text except

A) whether development is stagewise or continuous
B) the role of heredity and the environment
C) contributions of nature versus nurture
D) whether development is a closed or open system

Question 15

Culture and context

A) are less relevant for the study of infants than for older children
B) refer to aspects of "nature" rather than "nurture"
C) influence the way that parents care for and interact with infants
D) are concepts that have emerged from the study of cells and genes

Question 16

Which of the following discoveries is most closely related to the Human Genome Project?

A) Dietary regulation can alter the effects of phenylketonuria (PKU).
B) Parents who have stressful jobs may be less sensitive when interacting with their infants at home.
C) Even very young infants can communicate their needs nonverbally by cooing, crying, and reaching.
D) The diversity and validity of Native American family life is now recognized and supported.

Question 17

Which of the following is the correct order for these events?

A) Arrival of the first European immigrants in the New World, Indian Child Welfare Act, Chinese Exclusion Act, Human Genome Project.
B) Arrival of the first European immigrants in the New World, Chinese Exclusion Act, Indian Child Welfare Act, Human Genome Project
C) Human Genome Project, arrival of the first European immigrants in the New World, Indian Child Welfare Act, Chinese Exclusion Act
D) Arrival of the first European immigrants in the New World, Human Genome Project, Indian Child Welfare Act, Chinese Exclusion Act,

Question 18

All of the following statements are correct except

A) in many Native American cultures, other adults in the community assist the parents in guiding and supporting the child at significant milestones in his or her life
B) a history of family disruption has been found among many African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved
C) the first Mexican American families and families of Spanish descent came to the United States in the early twentieth century
D) Vietnamese families who immigrated to the United States have had different experiences as a function of differences in community sponsorship and support

Question 19

All of the following statements support the notion that nature and nurture work together except

A) all infants who inherit a gene for a disease develop that disease, regardless of differences in their nutrition and caregiving experience
B) exposure to alcohol during the prenatal period can alter the normal course of the brain's development
C) children's biological characteristics have an impact on the responses they elicit from parents and other caregivers
D) infants who do not have adequate exposure to language have great difficulty acquiring language, even though they show initial signs of the ability to learn

Question 20

Which of the following best reflects current thinking about the influence of the environment on infants' development?

A) Only the immediate home environment exerts a measurable influence.
B) For most outcomes and domains, genetics exert a greater influence than does the environment.
C) Environmental influences can be both direct and indirect, involving environments in which infants never spend any time.
D) Parents and other caregivers are unaware of most genetically determined characteristics and are thus unaffected by them.

Question 21

All of the following are examples of material culture except

A) parents' letters and diaries
B) toys
C) clothing
D) furniture

Question 22

Given that parents and children who lived in earlier times cannot be observed or interviewed, researchers use all of the following sources to study the past except

A) literary evidence
B) quantitative archival evidence
C) material culture
D) qualitative dialectical records

Question 23

In medieval Europe, a new form of infant abandonment was introduced, in which an infant or very young child was permanently "donated" to a monastery. This practice was known as

A) adoration
B) oblation
C) convocation
D) absorption

Question 24

In the early nineteenth century United States, the widely held belief that children as young as 18 months could and should be educated was known as the

A) infant insanity movement
B) infant school movement
C) industrial revolution
D) Puritanical reform

Question 25

In ancient Greece and Rome, the concept of citizenship included

A) producing healthy offspring to serve the state
B) producing daughters to continue the pattern of matrilineal inheritance
C) preventing pregnancy, in order not to contribute to overpopulation
D) granting inherent rights to infants

Question 26

For parents in earlier times who could not afford to keep their infants, which option offered the greatest likelihood that their children would survive?

A) abandonment
B) servitude
C) oblation
D) placement in a foundling home

Question 27

For Puritans in the New World, which statement appears to reflect their views about infants?

A) "They are innocent lambs, incapable of doing wrong."
B) "They may not survive, so we should not become emotionally attached to them.
C) "Give them love - it is not possible to spoil them with affection."
D) "They are innocent vipers, ignorant but inherently sinful."

Question 28

As an increasingly romantic view of childhood emerged in the United States during the nineteenth century,

A) mothers' influence was diminished and minimized
B) mothers' role as moral guardian was emphasized
C) children were regarded as creatures with an advanced moral sense
D) interest in children's souls increased while interest in their physical well being decreased

Question 29

Which of the following illustrates a significant change in family life in the United States from before the Industrial Revolution to the mid-twentieth century?

A) Growing up, Louis had ten siblings and Lena had eleven, but they decided that their family was big enough after their second child was born.
B) Jacob grew up in a large city but moved to a rural area as an adult and began working as a farmer.
C) Sarah and Franklin had a total of six children, but only one of those children lived past the age of one year.
D) Samuel, born during the Great Depression, was less negatively affected than his siblings who were born when their family and the country as a whole were more affluent.

Question 30

During the twentieth century,

A) parents increasingly turned away from child development professionals and their advice
B) services for children were established in schools, hospitals, clinics, and social agencies
C) behaviorism was the most influential perspective on children and their development
D) child development experts moved away from studying children's real-world problems and toward a focus on basic research questions

Question 31

Which person first became aware of child psychology while studying in Germany and has been described as having done more than any other founder to develop child psychology?

A) John B. Watson
B) Arnold Gesell
C) G. Stanley Hall
D) James Mark Baldwin

Question 32

As the discipline of child development emerged in the United States during the twentieth century,

A) child research institutes were established at a number of prominent universities
B) federal agencies that might have addressed children's social welfare problems were eliminated because of evidence that their efforts were ineffective
C) Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory was refuted by research and became less influential
D) the general public became less interested in scientific approaches to understanding children

Question 33

Which person is best known for studying "little Albert"?

A) James Mark Baldwin
B) Arnold Gesell
C) G. Stanley Hall
D) John B. Watson

Question 34

Which of these pioneers in child development minimized the importance of innate biological factors and maturation while asserting a primary role for experience?

A) John B. Watson and Luther Emmett Holt
B) Harry Harlow and James Mark Baldwin
C) Arnold Gesell and G. Stanley Hall
D) Sigmund Freud and John Bowlby

Question 35

In the early and mid-twentieth century, changes in societal attitudes toward children and their development

A) worked against efforts to pass legislation that would fund programs to address child welfare problems
B) led to the demise of Parents magazine
C) supported the passage of the Social Security Act
D) undermined initiatives to establish professional organizations for the study of children and their development

Question 36

Which pioneer in child development is most likely to have uttered the statement, "The best thing that parents can do is to follow their child's own natural impulses and rich imagination."

A) John B. Watson
B) Arnold Gesell
C) G. Stanley Hall
D) Sigmund Freud

Question 37

James Mark Baldwin's inclusion of research on animals in his studies of the development of human infants' hand preference reflected

A) the prevailing view at the time that infants were not actually fully human
B) his disinterest in social institutions and cultural contexts
C) the influence of Jean Piaget's theories of Baldwin's thinking
D) the influence of theories of evolution on studies of human behavior and development

Question 38

Which answer would John B. Watson most likely have given as his reason for choosing to study infants?

A) "I knew that I could eliminate the step of asking for their informed consent to participate in my research."
B) "I had access to the young residents of an orphanage and their parents were not around to object to my studies."
C) "I wanted to sell books, and the public will buy anything if it's written about babies."
D) "I think that later behavior and personality are simply the result of emotional responses that are conditioned early in life."