Deck 7: Physical and Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

Question 1

_______ skills increase at an astonishing pace in early childhood,whereas ______ skills develop gradually over childhood and adolescence.

A)Spatial;mathematical
B)Drawing;language
C)Mechanical;decoding
D)Language;spatial

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Four-year-old Erin is a picky eater.How can Erin's parents encourage her to eat a new food?

A)Reward her with dessert if she eats the new food.
B)Repeatedly expose her to the new food without any direct pressure to eat it.
C)Add salt or sugar to the new food to increase her willingness to eat it.
D)Make her stay at the table until she takes a few bites of the new food.

Answer 2

B

Question 3

With the transition to early childhood,many children

A)have an increase in appetite.
B)become unpredictable,picky eaters.
C)eat healthier foods than in infancy.
D)require different foods than adults for a healthy diet.

Answer 3

B

Question 4

For most children,the left cerebral hemisphere

A)is especially active between 3 and 6 years and then levels off.
B)shows slow activity throughout early and middle childhood.
C)shows a slight growth spurt between ages 8 and 10.
D)peaks between 1 and 3 years and decreases slowly throughout middle childhood and adolescence.

Question 5

Fibers linking the __________ to the __________ grow and myelinate from birth through the preschool years,contributing to dramatic gains in motor coordination.

A)cerebellum;cerebral cortex
B)corpus callosum;synapses
C)synapses;cerebellum
D)cerebral cortex;corpus callosum

Question 6

In early childhood,on average,children add ____ inches in height and _____ pounds in weight each year.

A)1 to 2;2
B)1 to 2;3 to 5
C)2 to 3;5
D)2 to 3;7 to 10

Question 7

An estimated 30 percent of U.S.preschoolers have ____________,a figure that rises to 60 percent by age 18.

A)brittle bones
B)tooth decay
C)epiphyses
D)suppressed immune systems

Question 8

X-rays of epiphyses enable doctors to estimate children's

A)adult weight.
B)loss of baby teeth.
C)brain development.
D)skeletal age.

Question 9

_______ may profoundly affect handedness.

A)Having a left-handed parent
B)Prenatal events
C)Typical right-facing fetal orientation
D)Myelination in the hippocampus

Question 10

Casey suffered damage to his cerebellum.Casey will most likely display both _______ and __________ deficits.

A)emotional;problem-solving
B)motor;cognitive
C)cognitive;social skills
D)attention;motor

Question 11

The _____________ aids in balance and control of body movement.

A)cerebral cortex
B)hippocampus
C)cerebellum
D)reticular formation

Question 12

Which of the following statements is true about childhood diseases?

A)Childhood diseases occur earlier in developing nations than in industrialized countries.
B)Even among well-nourished youngsters,ordinary childhood illnesses often interfere with physical growth.
C)Poor diet stimulates the body's immune system.
D)Oral rehydration therapy is more effective at preventing childhood illnesses than a high-quality diet.

Question 13

Which of the following is supported by research on nutrition?

A)Preschoolers require significantly more carbohydrates and fat than adults.
B)Serving "adult" foods like broccoli or tofu promotes picky eating in preschoolers.
C)Preschoolers compensate for a meal in which they eat little by eating more at a later meal.
D)In North America,few children lack access to sufficient high-quality foods.

Question 14

EEG and fMRI measures of neural activity in various cortical regions reveal

A)that the left hemisphere is relatively inactive in early childhood.
B)especially rapid growth from early to middle childhood in the frontal lobe.
C)a burst in activity in the right hemisphere in early childhood.
D)a rapid change in density in the parietal lobe in middle childhood.

Question 15

In contrast to activity in the left hemisphere,activity in the right cerebral hemisphere

A)is especially active between 3 and 6 years and then levels off.
B)increases steadily throughout early and middle childhood.
C)peaks between 1 and 3 years and then dramatically falls off.
D)peaks during adolescence.

Question 16

____________ is necessary for development of all body tissues except the central nervous system and the genitals.

A)Testosterone
B)Growth hormone
C)Estrogen
D)Thyroid-stimulating hormone

Question 17

Between ages 2 and 6,the brain increases from ______ percent of its adult weight to _____ percent.

A)25;60
B)45;70
C)60;80
D)70;90

Question 18

Which child is most likely to get his or her permanent teeth first?

A)Brooke,an obese girl
B)Malik,an undernourished boy
C)Jack,a well-nourished boy of average weight
D)Sasha,an undernourished girl

Question 19

Thyroid-stimulating hormone prompts the thyroid gland in the neck to release __________,which is necessary for brain development and for growth hormone to have its full impact on body size.

A)protein
B)estrogen
C)thyroxine
D)oxytocin

Question 20

The ___________,located at the base of the brain,plays a critical role by releasing two hormones that induce growth.

A)synapses
B)cerebellum
C)corpus callosum
D)pituitary gland

Question 21

About ____ percent of U.S.parents fail to place their preschoolers in car safety seats.

A)10
B)20
C)30
D)40

Question 22

Bullous lives in a shantytown.His parents can decrease the risks of persistent diarrhea by

A)limiting his diet to organic fruits and vegetables.
B)delaying his childhood immunizations,which routinely weaken the immune system.
C)administering oral rehydration therapy when he is sick.
D)limiting the amount of protein he eats and giving him a daily multivitamin.

Question 23

Which of the following is supported by research on childhood injuries?

A)U)S.children from advantaged families are at considerably greater risk for injury than children in Western Europe.
B)Childhood injury deaths in developing nations are 1.5 times as high as those in developed countries.
C)Safety devices,such as car seats and bicycle helmets,are readily available in developing nations,but they are rarely used by parents.
D)Contrary to popular belief,girls are more likely to be injured than boys during play.

Question 24

In the United States,__________ are the leading cause of death among children more than 1 year old.

A)drownings
B)motor vehicle collisions
C)fires
D)abuse and neglect

Question 25

Children first represent objects and events on paper by

A)drawing only the boundaries of objects.
B)labeling recognizable shapes in their scribbles.
C)making gestures that leave marks.
D)drawing stick figures.

Question 26

Boys are _____ times more likely to be injured than girls.

A)1)5
B)2
C)2)5
D)3

Question 27

Worldwide,_____ percent of deaths of children under age 5 are due to infectious diseases.

A)25
B)50
C)70
D)98

Question 28

__________,often caused by unsafe water and contaminated foods,leads to nearly 2 million childhood deaths each year.

A)Diarrhea
B)Scurvy
C)Rubella
D)Tuberculosis

Question 29

In industrialized nations,childhood diseases have declined dramatically during the past half century,largely as the result of

A)generous government nutrition programs.
B)government-funded health care.
C)widespread immunization of infants and young children.
D)a reduction in the number of viral and bacterial infections worldwide.

Question 30

Preschoolers' first attempts to print often involve writing

A)letters to their parents.
B)fictional stories.
C)a holiday or birthday wish list.
D)their own name.

Question 31

By the end of the preschool years,most children

A)benefit greatly from formal lessons in gymnastics,running,and tumbling.
B)are involved in competitive sports.
C)can consistently form cursive letters.
D)can tie their shoes.

Question 32

Which of the following is one reason the United States lags behind Denmark,Norway,Great Britain,Sweden,the Netherlands,and Canada in immunizations?

A)Uninsured American children do not receive free immunizations.
B)Childhood diseases have been virtually eradicated in the United States,making immunization unnecessary.
C)Many American children do not have access to the health care they need.
D)More American parents are aware that immunizations cause autism.

Question 33

_______________ are strongly associated with childhood injury.

A)Permissive child rearing and long hours in child care
B)Poverty,single parenthood,and low parental education
C)Family size and divorce
D)Poor school performance and inattentiveness

Question 34

As children's bodies become more streamlined and less top-heavy,

A)balance improves greatly.
B)their center of gravity shifts upward.
C)gross-motor development slows.
D)fine-motor development slows.

Question 35

In the United States,nearly ______ percent of childhood deaths and ______ percent of adolescent deaths result from injuries.

A)5;10
B)10;20
C)25;40
D)35;50

Question 36

Oral rehydration therapy

A)is effective but dangerous.
B)is expensive to administer.
C)saves the lives of millions of children every year.
D)requires hospitalization.

Question 37

__________ are the leading cause of childhood death in industrialized countries.

A)Carcinogens
B)Unintentional injuries
C)Birth defects
D)Infectious diseases

Question 38

Developmental impairments and deaths due to diarrhea can be prevented with oral rehydration therapy,which consists of

A)iron supplements.
B)antiviral drugs.
C)immunization of infants and young children.
D)a solution of glucose,salt,and water.

Question 39

About _____ percent of U.S.preschoolers lack essential immunizations.

A)9
B)18
C)23
D)34

Question 40

When ___________,preschoolers' pictures become more comprehensible and detailed.

A)they are able to represent depth in their drawings
B)adults draw with children and point out the resemblances between drawings and objects
C)they gesture rather than label their scribbles
D)they trace adult drawings

Question 41

According to Piaget,the most obvious change as children move from the sensorimotor to the preoperational stage is an increase in

A)representational,or symbolic,activity.
B)private speech.
C)logical thought.
D)abstract thought.

Question 42

Three-year-old Will brings all of his action figures to preschool for show-and-tell because he does not want any of them to feel bad if they are left behind at home.Will is demonstrating

A)centration.
B)animistic thinking.
C)conservation.
D)irreversibility.

Question 43

According to Piaget,the most fundamental deficiency of preoperational thinking is

A)egocentrism.
B)conservation.
C)animistic thinking.
D)dual representation.

Question 44

The most important illogical feature of preoperational thought is its

A)class inclusion.
B)irreversibility.
C)reversibility.
D)centration.

Question 45

According to Piaget,magical thinking is common during the preschool years because

A)parents often read magical fairy tales to their children.
B)assigning human purposes to physical events helps young children develop representational thought.
C)young children egocentrically assign human purposes to physical events.
D)it is more entertaining to young children than reasoning by analogy.

Question 46

The belief that inanimate objects have lifelike qualities,such as thoughts,wishes,feelings,and intentions,is called

A)conservation.
B)animistic thinking.
C)egocentrism.
D)dual representation.

Question 47

Preschoolers who _____________ are seen as more socially competent by their teachers.

A)prefer to play alone
B)spend more time in sociodramatic play
C)use more realistic objects in their pretend play
D)make up imaginary companions

Question 48

Which of the following is true about sex differences in motor skills in early childhood?

A)Boys have better balance than girls.
B)Girls can jump slightly farther than boys.
C)Boys can hop and skip better than girls.
D)Girls are ahead of boys in fine-motor skills.

Question 49

Contemporary researchers believe that make-believe play

A)is not nearly as important as Piaget thought.
B)not only reflects,but also contributes to,children's cognitive and social skills.
C)is less important than drawing or building with blocks.
D)is mere practice of representational schemes.

Question 50

Experiences with ___________ help preschoolers appreciate that one object can stand for another.

A)younger siblings
B)solving puzzles
C)diverse symbols
D)animistic thinking

Question 51

Which of the following is supported by research on individual differences in motor skills?

A)Environmental factors have little impact on sex differences in motor skills.
B)Sex differences in motor skills decrease with age.
C)Participation in competitive sports at a young age fosters motor development.
D)Parents tend to foster sex-stereotypic physical activities in their children.

Question 52

While playing house,3-year-old Lindsay uses a straw as a "bottle" to feed her doll.Lindsay has begun to grasp

A)egocentrism.
B)animistic thinking.
C)conservation.
D)dual representation.

Question 53

______________ refers to the idea that certain physical characteristics of object remain the same,even when their outward appearance changes.

A)Centration
B)Animistic thinking
C)Conservation
D)Magical thinking

Question 54

Five-year-old Chaim is participating in Piaget's three-mountains problem.When Chaim is asked to pick the picture that shows what the display looks like from the doll's perspective,he will most likely select the

A)correct picture but not be able to explain why he chose it.
B)picture that shows the researcher's point of view.
C)correct picture and be able to explain why he chose that picture.
D)picture that shows his own point of view.

Question 55

In Piaget's conservation-of-liquid problem,preoperational children are easily distracted by the ________ of objects and ignore the ___________ between events.

A)size;time period
B)transformation;reversibility of direction
C)perceptual appearance;dynamic transformation
D)color;interaction

Question 56

Piaget acknowledged that ________ is a child's most flexible means of mental representation.

A)imagination
B)language
C)intentional behavior
D)deferred imitation

Question 57

Piaget's conservation-of-liquid task demonstrates that preoperational children's thinking is characterized by __________ in that they focus on one aspect of a situation,neglecting other important features.

A)dynamic transformation
B)centration
C)hierarchical classification
D)irreversibility

Question 58

In early pretending,toddlers use

A)only realistic objects.
B)imaginary objects and events.
C)reflexive schemes.
D)internal scripts for role playing.

Question 59

Four-year-old Jasmine is shown two identical tall glasses of water and agrees that they contain the same amount of liquid.When the liquid is poured into a short,wide container,she says that there is more water in the shorter container because it is "all spread out." Jasmine is demonstrating

A)an inability to conserve.
B)animistic thinking.
C)magical thinking.
D)reversibility.

Question 60

Which of the following is true about the development of make-believe play?

A)Make-believe play becomes increasingly self-centered with age.
B)Toddlers' first pretend acts are flexible.
C)Sociodramatic play decreases during the preschool years.
D)Older preoperational children are aware that make-believe play is a representational activity.

Question 61

In village and tribal cultures,parents have little need to rely on conversation and play to teach children because

A)they are too busy working and maintaining their households to interact with their children.
B)they instead focus on preparing children for academic success and civic engagement.
C)children spend their day in contact with adult work and start to assume mature responsibilities in early childhood.
D)young children spent most of their time playing with and talking to their agemates.

Question 62

According to Vygotsky,a parent engages in _______ when he adjusts the support offered to the child during a teaching session to fit the child's current level of performance.

A)transitive inference
B)dual representation
C)proximal teaching
D)scaffolding

Question 63

According to Vygotsky,private speech during the preschool years

A)reflects young children's egocentrism.
B)is not nearly as important as Piaget thought.
C)is externalized with age.
D)helps young children guide their behavior during challenging tasks.

Question 64

Which of the following is true about preschoolers' ability to generate and follow a plan?

A)Preschoolers' difficulty with appearance versus reality contributes to their poor planning skills.
B)Preschoolers cannot systematically search for a lost object even if possible locations are few.
C)When parents encourage planning in everyday activities,they help children plan more effectively.
D)Preschoolers are not yet capable of planning,even if the tasks are familiar and not too complex.

Question 65

Information processing focuses on ___________that children use to transform stimuli flowing into their mental systems.

A)physical skills
B)attention strategies
C)mental strategies
D)metacognition skills

Question 66

One reason Piagetian problems do not always elicit responses reflecting preschoolers' true cognitive abilities is that they contain

A)too many familiar elements.
B)unfamiliar elements or too many pieces of information.
C)an insufficient amount of information for the young child to process.
D)too many real-world examples.

Question 67

In Western societies,the role of equipping children with the skills they need to become competent workers is assigned to

A)parents.
B)schools.
C)child-care programs.
D)technical training programs.

Question 68

A major reason that sustained attention improves in the preschool years is

A)a steady gain in children's ability to inhibit impulses and keep their mind on a competing goal.
B)that adults use scaffolding to help children focus.
C)that children become bored by novelty.
D)that children begin to distinguish appearance from reality.

Question 69

Piaget called children's self-directed utterances _________ speech,reflecting his belief that young children have difficulty taking the perspectives of others.

A)inner
B)egocentric
C)private
D)collaborative

Question 70

Compared to their Western agemates,Yucatec Mayan preschoolers

A)engage in more sophisticated make-believe play.
B)are not as self-sufficient.
C)are less competent at self-care.
D)seldom ask others for something interesting to do.

Question 71

___________ contribute(s)to the decline of magical beliefs.

A)Familiarity with physical events and principles
B)Access to formal education
C)Development of abstract thinking
D)Language and reading ability

Question 72

Follow-up research indicates that even though preschoolers have difficulty with Piagetian class inclusion tasks,they

A)have complex category systems.
B)organize their everyday knowledge into nested categories at an early age.
C)are capable of abstract reasoning.
D)cannot use logic or causal reasoning to form global categories.

Question 73

Consistent with Vygotsky's ideas,research shows that ______________ predict(s)gains in children's thinking.

A)adult cognitive support
B)improvements in sustained attention
C)the ability to conserve
D)dual representation

Question 74

Follow-up research on preoperational thought indicates that

A)children who believe in the supernatural powers of fairies,goblins,and other enchanted creatures tend to be maladjusted.
B)Piaget greatly underestimated preschoolers' animistic beliefs.
C)Most 3- and 4-year-olds believe in the supernatural powers of fairies,goblins,and other enchanted creatures.
D)Few 3- and 4-year-olds believe that magic accounts for events that they cannot explain.

Question 75

Preoperational children have difficulty with ________________,which involves the organization of objects into groups based on similarities and differences.

A)animistic thinking
B)egocentrism
C)hierarchical classification
D)reversibility

Question 76

Vygotsky viewed __________ play as the ideal social context for fostering cognitive development in early childhood.

A)make-believe
B)outdoor
C)cooperative
D)parallel

Question 77

Itzel,a Yucatec Mayan preschooler,is hungry.She is most likely to

A)decide for herself when and how much to eat.
B)ask her mother to make her a meal.
C)wait until the family's set mealtime to eat.
D)make a pretend meal for herself and her dolls to "eat."

Question 78

After putting on a Halloween mask and looking at her reflection in a mirror,3-year-old Maggi is frightened.This is probably because Maggi

A)associates Halloween with evil.
B)thinks magically and believes she has superpowers.
C)has a fragile understanding of the appearance-reality distinction.
D)cannot yet regulate negative emotion.

Question 79

_____________ refers to shared endeavors between more expert and less expert participants,without specifying the precise features of communication.

A)The zone of proximal development
B)Guided participation
C)Discovery learning
D)Scaffolding

Question 80

Research shows that children more often use private speech when

A)they have difficulty taking the perspectives of others.
B)they are engaged in cooperative dialogues.
C)tasks are appropriately challenging and they are confused about how to proceed.
D)they cannot find a conversational partner.