Deck 1: An Introduction to Child Development

Question 1

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

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

Answer 1

D

Question 2

A researcher would be MOST likely to use a microgenetic design to examine which topic?

A) basic pattern of age-related changes in a particular skill
B) pattern of stability and change in individual children's development in a particular area
C) how change in a particular skill occurs
D) how individual differences remain stable over long periods of time

Answer 2

C

Question 3

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.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

One study discussed in the text demonstrated that infants with a particular form of one of the genes influencing production of neurotransmitters associated with effortful attention had lower effortful attention than other infants when they also were exposed to poor parenting. What principle is demonstrated by this study?

A) Environment plays a crucial role in the expression of genes.
B) The expression of genes plays a crucial role in one's environment.
C) Some genetic influences operate regardless of environment.
D) Current research methods often do not allow researchers to separate the influences of genetics and environment.

Question 5

Which factor is NOT one identified by Scarr (1992) that can lead children from the same family to turn out very different 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 6

The study that examined the lying behavior of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds utilized which type of design?

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

Question 7

A method that allows researchers to gather information from a large number of participants simultaneously by presenting them a uniform set of items is referred to as a(n)

A) interview.
B) cross-sectional study.
C) longitudinal study.
D) questionnaire.

Question 8

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 9

With which statement would stage theorists NOT agree?

A) Behaviors of children at different ages differ sharply.
B) A child's entry into a new stage involves a gradual shift from one way of experiencing the world to a different way of experiencing it.
C) Children of a particular age show wide-ranging similarities across a variety of situations.
D) When children enter a new cognitive stage, they demonstrate their new way of thinking across a broad spectrum of tasks.

Question 10

Neurotransmitters can BEST be described as

A) electrical impulses in the brain.
B) chemicals involved in communication between brain cells.
C) gene defects that produce schizophrenia.
D) what early philosophers theorized reflected children's core nature at birth.

Question 11

Who developed the baby biography?

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

Question 12

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

A) sociocultural context
B) genes
C) children's choice of environments
D) treatment by parents and others

Question 13

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) the United States
D) Mexico

Question 14

To examine whether children's cognitive development occurs in stages, Professor Blue observes four groups of children. Each child's performance on cognitive tasks is observed two or more times over a period of 2 years. Which group is MOST likely to lead Professor Blue to conclude that development occurs continuously?

A) group A, whose performance on a single task is observed twice each year
B) group B, whose performance on multiple tasks is observed twice each year
C) group C, whose performance on a single task is observed every week
D) group D, whose performance on multiple tasks is observed every week

Question 15

What do longitudinal designs do?

A) study children on the verge of a developmental change in order to examine the processes that produce changes
B) compare groups of children who are of different ages on the same variable
C) follow the same children over a period of time
D) use random assignment

Question 16

Evidence for the enduring epigenetic impact of early experiences and behaviors on development comes from what type of research?

A) research on methylation
B) meta-analysis
C) longitudinal studies
D) cross-sectional designs

Question 17

Which person is MOST likely to develop schizophrenia, based on current research findings?

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 18

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?

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

Question 19

Which child in the United States is MOST likely to live below the poverty line?

A) Brice, who is White, non-Hispanic and whose parents are currently divorced
B) Tracey, who is Hispanic and whose parents have recently remarried
C) Suan, who is African American and lives in a single-mother household
D) Chris, who is White, non-Hispanic and lives in a single-mother household

Question 20

To examine the effect of empathy training on teenagers' bullying behaviors, 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 21

The text describes a study examining the link between sleeping with a nightlight in infancy and later developing nearsightedness. This study exhibited which type of problem?

A) negative-correlation
B) third-variable
C) causal-relationship
D) direction-of-causation

Question 22

Which item would NOT be considered part of the sociocultural context involved in an American child's language development?

A) number of words in a child's vocabulary
B) town budget for speech therapy
C) parental knowledge of child development
D) modern American value for education

Question 23

Which of Scarr's factors is BEST related to the theme of the active child?

A) genetic differences
B) different choices of environment
C) differences in treatment by parents and others
D) different reactions to similar experiences

Question 24

Which view of changes in height would lead to a view that height development is smooth and continuous?

A) view A: measuring the height of a boy at yearly intervals from birth to age 18
B) view B: examining changes in height from one year to the next from birth to age 18
C) Both view A and view B make changes in height look continuous.
D) Both view A and view B make changes in height look discontinuous.

Question 25

A researcher would be MOST likely to use a cross-sectional design to examine which topic?

A) typical pattern of age-related changes in a particular skill
B) pattern of stability and change in individual children's development in a particular area
C) how change in a particular skill occurs
D) how individual differences remain stable over long periods of time

Question 26

Crib speech is a(n)

A) demonstration of the importance of nature on development.
B) early indication of schizophrenia.
C) phenomenon Freud observed and used as a partial basis for his theory.
D) example of an individual's contributions to his or her own development.

Question 27

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 28

Which statement describes a potential disadvantage of the interview method?

A) The interview method has limited value for studying infrequent behaviors.
B) Individuals may distort the way that events happened.
C) It is difficult to gather information about participants' subjective experiences.
D) It does not enable the researcher to examine the subject in an in-depth manner.

Question 29

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.

Question 30

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

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

Question 31

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 32

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

A) Toddlers' play behavior 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 33

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 34

The study in which 6-year-old children were presented with a 5-day training program designed to improve effortful attention demonstrated that experience can

A) improve intelligence test scores but not brain processes.
B) change brain processes but not intelligence test scores.
C) improve both intelligence test scores and brain processes.
D) change neither intelligence test scores nor brain processes.

Question 35

Which item is a potential source of internal invalidity?

A) passage of time
B) inconsistent findings across different groups of participants
C) observer disagreement
D) conflicting scores on multiple test days

Question 36

Which statement describes the results of research by Dweck on children's beliefs about intelligence?

A) Children who believe that intelligence is a fixed entity are more likely than are other children to persist in the face of difficulty.
B) Children who believe that intelligence can be increased by learning are more likely than are other children to say they are dumb when faced with a challenge.
C) Children who believe that intelligence is a fixed entity are more likely than are other children to think that a very challenging problem is too hard for them.
D) Children who believe that intelligence can be decreased are more likely than are other children to quit trying at challenging tasks.

Question 37

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 38

Professor Bryson is a researcher who asks children a series of predetermined questions about how much they like to play with their siblings. He is using

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

Question 39

Researchers interested in understanding the process of change are MOST likely to use a _____ design.

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

Question 40

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 experience of the event.
D) of all of these factors.

Question 41

Which family group in the United States has the HIGHEST percentage of the population below the poverty line?

A) married-couple Hispanic families
B) married-couple White families
C) single-mother Asian families
D) single-mother Black families

Question 42

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

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

Question 43

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

A) dividing participants by hair color
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 44

Attributes that vary across individuals and situations are termed

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

Question 45

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 46

Which statement about naturalistic observation is NOT true?

A) Researchers try not to influence the behaviors of the individuals they are observing.
B) Researchers must ensure that the effects they observe are due to the variables they intentionally manipulated.
C) Obtaining sufficient interrater reliability is important.
D) The principal objective is to observe how people act in their usual surroundings.

Question 47

Who did NOT propose a stage theory related to child development?

A) Piaget
B) Freud
C) Erikson
D) Darwin

Question 48

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 behaviors.
C) Their results were inconclusive.
D) They concluded that the effect of playing violent video games on childhood and adolescent aggression were minimal.

Question 49

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

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

Question 50

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 behavior.

Question 51

Which theoretical perspective proposes that two interconnected brain areas, the hippocampus and the cortex, simultaneously encode new information during learning?

A) Darwin's theory of evolution
B) Piaget's theory of cognitive development
C) Active Systems Consolidation Theory
D) psychosexual stages of development

Question 52

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 53

A class of 3rd-grade 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

Question 54

Siegler and Jenkins's examination of the development of the counting-on strategy is an example of _____ design.

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

Question 55

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 56

Groups created through random assignment would NOT be comparable with regard to

A) socioeconomic status.
B) number of children in family.
C) IQ score.
D) experimental group.

Question 57

Researchers would be LEAST likely to examine the effect of _____ on _____ with experimental design.

A) children's TV viewing habits; sibling relationships
B) teachers' testing procedures; children's school achievement
C) poverty; children's beliefs about intelligence
D) social skills training; children's ability to make friends

Question 58

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

Question 59

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 60

A town committee learns that there is a strong negative correlation between the number of inches of daily rainfall and the number of children who use the neighborhood 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 61

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 62

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 behavior agree.
C) the results of a study will hold when studies are conducted with different participants and methods.
D) independent measurements of a given behavior are consistent.

Question 63

Which statement does NOT express a benefit of structured observation?

A) The researcher can design the context to elicit the behavior of interest.
B) Researchers are able to observe behaviors that occur only infrequently.
C) Children feel comfortable in their own environment.
D) All children are observed in the same situation.

Question 64

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?

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 65

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 66

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

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

Question 67

In the research by Blackwell, Trzeniewski, and Dweck described in the text, researchers created an educational program for low-income middle school students. The children who showed the MOST substantial improvement in math grades were those children who initially believed that intelligence _____ and who were provided with information about how _____.

A) is an unchanging quantity; memory works
B) is an unchanging quantity; learning alters the brain
C) improves through learning; memory works
D) improves through learning; learning alters the brain

Question 68

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

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

Question 69

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

A) external validity.
B) relevance to the hypothesis.
C) reliability.
D) interrater agreement.

Question 70

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

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

Question 71

One of the earliest examples of research conducted for the benefit of children was

A) Watson's experiments on the effects of reward and punishment.
B) the Earl of Shaftesbury's effort to reform child labor practices.
C) Freud's dream analysis.
D) Locke's advocacy of early discipline and later freedom.

Question 72

Which statement about individuals' contributions to their own development is TRUE?

A) Most individuals rarely actively contribute to their own development.
B) Infants are incapable of actively contributing to their own development.
C) Individuals' active contributions to their own development strengthen as they age.
D) Individuals' active contributions to their own development weaken as they age.

Question 73

Which research design has a limitation regarding being used to study many variables of interest at the same time?

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

Question 74

According to the text, which is NOT an aspect related to child development that has been influenced by Darwin's work on evolution?

A) infant attachment
B) gender identity
C) innate fear
D) learning

Question 75

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 76

Test-retest reliability refers to the

A) level of agreement between different observers of the same behavior.
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 77

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 78

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

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

Question 79

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 80

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

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