Deck 9: Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood

Question 1

Which of the following statements about obesity rates in China is true?

A) Obesity is nearly nonexistent in China.
B) Chinese boys are more likely than Chinese girls to be obese.
C) Today, 10 percent of Chinese children are overweight and 5 percent are obese.
D) A prevailing belief in the Chinese culture is that excess body fat signifies ill health and laziness.

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Research shows that obesity has caused a dramatic rise in cases of __________ in children.

A) asthma
B) diabetes
C) tuberculosis
D) heart disease

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Which of the following U.S.children is the most likely to suffer from asthma?

A) Ginger, an overweight Hispanic girl
B) Ellysa, an African-American girl who lives in poverty
C) Meghan, a high-SES Asian girl
D) Tanya, a Caucasian girl who lives in a rural area

Answer 3

B

Question 4

Research reveals that the rise in childhood obesity is due in part to

A) a lack of physical play space in many neighborhoods and schools.
B) the increasing number of hours children sleep at night.
C) the many hours children spend watching television.
D) ineffective health education in the primary grades.

Question 5

Which of the following statements about the causes of obesity is true?

A) Fraternal twins are more likely to share the disorder than identical twins.
B) Obese children are less responsive than normal-weight individuals to internal hunger cues.
C) Inactivity is a consequence, not a cause, of obesity.
D) Parents of overweight children rarely use high-fat, sugary foods as behavior reinforcers.

Question 6

During middle childhood,

A) girls are slightly shorter and lighter than boys.
B) children appear longer-legged than they do in early childhood.
C) children add about 1 to 2 inches in height and 10 pounds in weight each year.
D) boys begin accumulating fat at a faster rate than girls.

Question 7

Paul is concerned because his 6-year-old son prints using large letters and numbers.You can tell Paul that his son's writing is large because he

A) cannot yet visually distinguish fine details.
B) has not yet developed adequate depth perception.
C) makes strokes with his entire arm rather than just the wrist and fingers.
D) can only use his wrist and fingers to form the letters and numbers.

Question 8

During middle childhood,Shannon became increasingly flexible and was able to perform cartwheels and handstands.This is probably because

A) her ligaments were not yet firmly attached to bones.
B) the bones of her body had shortened and narrowed.
C) she was losing "baby fat" at an increasing rate.
D) her bones were strengthening while her muscles were weakening.

Question 9

Compared with preschoolers,school-age children

A) have more balance problems.
B) are physically less pliable and elastic.
C) are quicker and have more accurate movements.
D) have a decreased capacity to react to only relevant information.

Question 10

By far,the most common chronic disease or condition of children in the United States is

A) sickle cell anemia.
B) asthma.
C) cystic fibrosis.
D) diabetes.

Question 11

During middle childhood,boys outperform girls in

A) drawing.
B) agility.
C) throwing.
D) hopping.

Question 12

Physical growth during the school years

A) increases dramatically from the pace of early childhood.
B) continues at the slow, regular pace of early childhood.
C) speeds up more significantly for boys than for girls.
D) slows dramatically.

Question 13

From first through twelfth grades,girls

A) are more positive than boys about the value of sports.
B) have an edge over boys in most gross-motor skills.
C) judge their own athletic abilities higher than they really are.
D) are less positive than boys about their own sports ability.

Question 14

Irene's body mass index is in the 87th percentile.Irene is

A) obese.
B) underweight.
C) overweight.
D) at a healthy weight.

Question 15

Research on nutrition indicates that

A) malnutrition that persists into the school years rarely leads to permanent physical or mental damage.
B) eating an evening meal with parents leads to a diet lower in fast foods and soft drinks.
C) the percentage of children who eat dinner with their families increases slightly between ages 9 and 14.
D) school-age children often become picky eaters, but mild nutritional deficits rarely affect growth or cognitive functioning.

Question 16

In one obesity intervention program,where both parents and children revised eating patterns and exercised daily,

A) the more weight parents lost, the more their children lost.
B) adults maintained their weight loss more effectively than children.
C) parents tended to undermine their children's progress.
D) follow-up research showed little weight-loss maintenance.

Question 17

Obese children report __________ than normal-weight children.

A) fewer school difficulties
B) more suicidal thoughts
C) less aggression
D) less social isolation

Question 18

Which of the following statements about playing games in middle childhood is true?

A) Child-invented games are usually contests of individual ability.
B) Gains in perspective taking permit a transition to rule-oriented games.
C) School-age children today spend more time engaged in informal outdoor play.
D) For most children, joining community sports is associated with decreased self-esteem.

Question 19

Compared to their peers,__________ are at greater risk for developing asthma.

A) children who live in rural areas
B) middle-SES children
C) Asian children
D) boys

Question 20

Between ages 6 and 12,

A) 12 of the primary teeth are lost and replaced by permanent ones.
B) many children experience a decreasing desire for physical exercise.
C) girls lose their teeth slightly earlier than boys.
D) girls have slightly more muscle and boys more body fat.

Question 21

The information-processing perspective

A) focuses on overall cognitive change.
B) examines separate aspects of thinking.
C) fails to consider biological influences on thinking.
D) argues that gains in operational thinking are abrupt and automatic.

Question 22

Neo-Piagetian theorist Robbie Case proposed that

A) the development of operational thinking is the result of a sudden shift to a new stage.
B) the best way to describe cognitive development is using a staircase analogy-each new skill is a step up.
C) cognitive schemes demand less attention and become more automatic with practice.
D) the very experience of going to school seems to promote mastery of Piagetian tasks.

Question 23

When children of the same age are tested,those who __________ do better on transitive inference problems.

A) are more advanced in fine-motor development
B) have been in school longer
C) are left-handed
D) live in collectivist cultures

Question 24

Although 8-year-old Claire can easily arrange sticks of differing lengths from shortest to tallest,she cannot solve the following problem: "Jack is taller than Sam,and Sam is taller than Max.Who is the tallest?" This is because Claire's concrete mental operations work poorly with

A) abstract ideas.
B) logical constructs.
C) everyday decision making.
D) organized thoughts.

Question 25

In recent years,recess has

A) been incorporated into the academic curriculum of many U.S. public schools.
B) increased in popularity in U.S. elementary schools.
C) been linked to losses in academic achievement.
D) diminished or disappeared in many U.S. elementary schools.

Question 26

Heritability evidence suggests __________ genetic influences on various aspects of executive function,including combining information in working memory,controlling attention,and inhibiting inappropriate responses.

A) little or no
B) only minor
C) moderate
D) substantial

Question 27

Dr.Goldberg introduces irrelevant stimuli into a task and records how well children attend to its central elements.Dr.Goldberg is probably studying

A) adaptability of attention.
B) memory strategies.
C) selectivity of attention.
D) elaboration.

Question 28

Best friends,Gabe and Zeke,wrestle,roll,and chase after each other,alternating roles while smiling and laughing.This type of rough-and-tumble play

A) is equally common among boys and girls.
B) predicts aggressive behavior during adolescence.
C) helps children assess the strength of peers in a safe context.
D) is a uniquely human social behavior.

Question 29

Participation in community athletic teams

A) often results in psychological damage to children.
B) is the leading cause of childhood injury.
C) often interferes with school work and can cause a sharp decline in academic achievement.
D) seems to foster self-esteem and social skills.

Question 30

A child who is capable of reversibility can

A) center on just one aspect of a problem, rather than focus on several aspects at once.
B) focus on relations between a general category and two specific categories at the same time.
C) order items along a quantitative dimension.
D) think through a series of steps and then mentally reverse direction.

Question 31

Many experts recommend that the content of physical education programs be changed to emphasize

A) training in competitive sports.
B) individual exercise.
C) activities demanding a high level of skill.
D) grades.

Question 32

Which of the following statements about children's map-making abilities is true?

A) Girls tend to be better than boys at map making.
B) Preschool children do not yet include landmarks on maps they draw.
C) School-age children combine landmarks and routes into an overall view of a large-scale space.
D) Map making is a universal skill that emerges in most children by age 6.

Question 33

Howie solves arithmetic word problems but rarely draws pictures.According to Case's neo-Piagetian theory,Howie probably displays __________ thinking in __________.

A) more advanced; solving word problems
B) egocentric; solving word problems
C) more advanced; drawing
D) egocentric; both drawing and solving word problems

Question 34

According to Piaget,children are first able to __________ in middle childhood.

A) think in an abstract way
B) understand object permanence
C) successfully complete conservation tasks
D) combine multiple schemes

Question 35

Children master concrete operational tasks

A) after they master abstract thinking.
B) all at once.
C) much later than Piaget believed.
D) step by step.

Question 36

Seven-year-old Paolo can efficiently arrange a series of sticks of different lengths from shortest to longest.Paolo has developed an ability called

A) classification.
B) decentration.
C) spatial reasoning.
D) seriation.

Question 37

During a conservation-of-water experiment,Emme can focus on several aspects of the problem and relate them,rather than center on just one aspect.Therefore,Emme is capable of

A) seriation.
B) class inclusion.
C) reversibility.
D) decentration.

Question 38

Teacher ratings of classroom disruptive behavior decline for children who have

A) 5 to 10 minutes of recess a day.
B) the threat of recess cancellation if any child misbehaves.
C) more than 15 minutes of recess a day.
D) no recess.

Question 39

Nine-year-old Monica enjoys making up games and playing them with her friends.Playing these child-invented games probably allows Monica to

A) practice winning and losing with little personal risk.
B) develop a sense of pride in her superior motor skills.
C) play without rules and rely on individual ability.
D) compete against her friends and establish a dominance hierarchy.

Question 40

Madison has developed an ability called transitive inference.This means Madison can

A) seriate mentally.
B) draw maps to scale.
C) classify three relations at once.
D) readily read maps of extended outdoor environments.

Question 41

Before leaving on a trip,Chuck needs to remember to pack his fishing pole and feed the dog.To aid his memory,Chuck imagines the dog fishing.This memory strategy is known as

A) organization.
B) elaboration.
C) metacognition.
D) rehearsal.

Question 42

Throughout elementary and secondary school,__________ predicts academic success.

A) learned helplessness
B) metacognitive awareness
C) self-regulation
D) interpersonal intelligence

Question 43

Jensen had to memorize the state capitals.To do so,he repeated the information to himself over and over.Jensen used a memory strategy known as

A) elaboration.
B) organization.
C) metacognition.
D) rehearsal.

Question 44

In a study of rural children in Cameroon,Africa,those who __________ performed much better on theory-of-mind tasks.

A) attended school
B) worked in the fields
C) spent more time at home
D) engaged in more make-believe play

Question 45

As children make the transition from emergent literacy to conventional reading,__________ continues to predict reading and spelling progress.

A) phonological awareness
B) metacognitive awareness
C) practical intelligence
D) transitive inference

Question 46

Which of the following statements about attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)is true?

A) All children with ADHD are hyperactive.
B) Fraternal twins are more likely than identical twins to have ADHD.
C) Boys are diagnosed with ADHD about four times as often as girls.
D) For a child to be diagnosed with ADHD, symptoms must appear before age 5.

Question 47

People in non-Western cultures who lack formal schooling

A) are especially likely use memory strategies.
B) need to use memory strategies for day-to-day problem solving.
C) use more elaboration than rehearsal or organization.
D) rarely benefit from instruction in memory strategies.

Question 48

Children who acquire effective self-regulatory skills develop a sense of

A) academic self-efficacy.
B) learned helplessness.
C) metacognition.
D) practical intelligence.

Question 49

Mrs.Lindon believes that,from the beginning,children should be exposed to text in its complete form so that they can appreciate the communicative function of written language.Mrs.Lindon takes a __________ approach to teaching reading.

A) pragmatic
B) whole-language
C) phonics
D) metacognitive

Question 50

Using __________,Jared can memorize the countries in Africa by grouping them by region.

A) organization
B) elaboration
C) metacognition
D) rehearsal

Question 51

IQ often enters into educational decisions because it

A) helps to identify strategies for teaching poorly performing students.
B) assesses a child's ability to profit from instruction in the general education classroom.
C) predicts school performance and educational attainment.
D) provides an accurate measure of practical intelligence.

Question 52

Children best learn to read using

A) a whole-language approach.
B) a phonics approach.
C) a combination of both whole-language and phonics instruction.
D) drill and repetition.

Question 53

Which of the following statements about mathematics teaching in elementary schools is true?

A) Because children need to retrieve mathematical answers automatically, they should be exclusively taught by rote.
B) Complex skills can only be learned by drill in computation and rote memorization.
C) Reasoning about number concepts should replace drill in computation in elementary school.
D) A blend of both drill in computing and "number sense," or understanding, is most beneficial.

Question 54

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)is

A) most commonly treated using behavior modification techniques.
B) not usually a lifelong disorder.
C) highly heritable and is also associated with environmental factors.
D) most often caused by a highly stressful home life.

Question 55

Nine-year-old Brett views his mind as an active,constructive agent that selects and transforms information.Brett's awareness of thought is known as

A) selectivity of attention.
B) elaboration.
C) metacognition.
D) cognitive self-regulation.

Question 56

In Asian countries,

A) teachers emphasize drill in computational skills more than in U.S. schools.
B) use of the metric system helps children grasp place value.
C) teachers spend much less time on underlying math concepts than in U.S. classrooms.
D) multidigit problems are introduced later than they are in U.S. schools.

Question 57

Virtually all intelligence tests provide an overall score (the IQ),which represents __________ intelligence.

A) practical
B) general
C) creative
D) spatial

Question 58

The intelligence tests given from time to time in classrooms are

A) mainly used for instruction planning.
B) group-administered.
C) individually administered.
D) observational.

Question 59

Mr.Traxler firmly believes that children should be coached on the basic rules for translating written symbols into sound before they are exposed to complex reading material.Mr.Traxler takes a __________ approach to teaching reading.

A) pragmatic
B) whole-language
C) phonics
D) metacognitive

Question 60

Knowing about a topic makes new information

A) more meaningful.
B) harder to store.
C) harder to retrieve.
D) less relevant.

Question 61

Which of the following individuals would be the most likely to mention cognitive traits when asked to describe an intelligent first grader?

A) Barbara, a Caucasian American
B) Luis, a Mexican
C) Madison, an African American
D) Danilo, a Filipino

Question 62

Processing speed,assessed in terms of reaction time on diverse cognitive tasks,is __________ related to IQ.

A) not
B) weakly
C) moderately
D) strongly

Question 63

Tanner is a Native American with a sixth-grade education.When completing tasks with his children,Tanner works together with them in a coordinated,fluid way,each focusing on the same aspect of the problem.Tanner uses a(n)__________ style of communication.

A) collaborative
B) objective
C) hierarchical
D) knowledge-training

Question 64

The Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales,Fifth Edition,

A) provides separate scores for analytical, creative, and practical intelligence.
B) emphasizes crystallized knowledge.
C) assesses five intellectual factors.
D) does not include a nonverbal mode of testing.

Question 65

With increasing education,parents establish a __________ style of communication,like that of classrooms and tests.

A) collaborative
B) convergent
C) hierarchical
D) knowledge-training

Question 66

According to Sternberg's triarchic theory,generating useful solutions to new problems relies on __________ intelligence.

A) practical
B) creative
C) analytical
D) emotional

Question 67

An observational study carried out in low-SES African-American homes in a southeastern U.S.city revealed that black parents rarely asked their children

A) "real" questions that they themselves could not answer.
B) knowledge-training questions.
C) analogy questions.
D) story-starter questions.

Question 68

When children of the same age enrolled in different grades are compared,those who __________ score higher on intelligence tests.

A) wait longer to attend school
B) have been held back a grade
C) have been in school longer
D) have attended fewer schools

Question 69

Hank is skilled at discriminating complex inner feelings and using them to guide his behavior.According to Gardner,Hank is advanced in __________ intelligence.

A) interpersonal
B) bodily-kinesthetic
C) intrapersonal
D) general

Question 70

Which of the following U.S.children is the most likely to score the highest on an intelligence test?

A) Wanda, who is African-American
B) Patrice, who is Hispanic
C) Reggie, who is Caucasian
D) Eileen, who is Asian American

Question 71

Which intellectual factor of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales,Fifth Edition,is the most likely to contain culturally biased problems?

A) visual-spatial processing
B) quantitative reasoning
C) working memory
D) basic information processing

Question 72

Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory of successful intelligence identifies which of the following three broad,interacting intelligences?

A) linguistic, emotional, and practical
B) creative, intrapersonal, and emotional
C) analytical, creative, and practical
D) spatial, kinesthetic, and interpersonal

Question 73

Individuals whose __________ systems function more efficiently appear to have an edge in intellectual skills.

A) endocrine
B) nervous
C) respiratory
D) cardiovascular

Question 74

When children of low-IQ biological mothers were adopted at birth by parents who were well above average in income and education,they

A) showed a significant decline in IQ across middle childhood and adolescence.
B) did as well as children with high-IQ biological mothers placed in similar adoptive families.
C) scored above average in IQ during the school years.
D) scored below average in IQ during early and middle childhood.

Question 75

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

A) was designed to downplay culturally dependent knowledge.
B) emphasizes only one factor-verbal reasoning.
C) was the first test designed to measure intelligence from infancy through late adulthood.
D) is more culturally biased than the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales, Fifth Edition.

Question 76

In two studies of African-American children adopted into economically well-off white homes during the first year of life,the children scored

A) high on intelligence tests by middle childhood.
B) below average on intelligence tests during the school years.
C) lower on intelligence tests than white children adopted into similar homes.
D) above average on early childhood intelligence tests, but scores decreased by middle childhood.

Question 77

In his 1969 monograph,"How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement?" Arthur Jensen claimed that

A) heredity is largely responsible for individual, ethnic, and SES variations in intelligence.
B) the environment is largely responsible for individual, ethnic, and SES variations in intelligence.
C) test bias largely accounts for ethnic variations in intelligence.
D) there are no significant individual, ethnic, or SES variations in intelligence.

Question 78

Which of the following statements about evidence of heritability in intelligence testing is true?

A) Researchers estimate that about half the differences in IQ among children can be traced to their genetic makeup.
B) The IQ scores of fraternal twins are more similar than those of identical twins.
C) Heritability estimates risk underestimating genetic influences and overestimating environmental influences.
D) Heritability estimates reveal the complex processes through which genes and experiences influence intelligence.

Question 79

Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's 1994 book,The Bell Curve,argues that

A) IQ variations are largely determined by differences in environment.
B) heredity contributes substantially to individual and SES differences in IQ.
C) ethnic and social class differences in IQ are unfounded.
D) IQ shows significant fluctuations over the lifespan.

Question 80

According to Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences,linguistic intelligence includes

A) the ability to detect and respond appropriately to the moods and motivations of others.
B) sensitivity to the sounds, rhythms, and meaning of words and the functions of language.
C) the ability to handle long chains of logical reasoning.
D) knowledge of one's own strengths, weaknesses, and desires.