Deck 6: The Symbolic Child: Piagets Theory and Beyond

Question 1

Piaget believed that the top priority of infants and children was to

A)understand an objective reality of the world.
B)learn to communicate with others.
C)develop survival skills.
D)construct the world in their minds.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which of the following is the best metaphor for infants in the substage of tertiary circular reactions?

A)a robot
B)a doll
C)a parent
D)a scientist

Answer 2

D

Question 3

During the preoperational period, children's thinking

A)is limited to understanding the world in terms of their perceptions and actions.
B)shows true cognitive operations.
C)is characterized by mental representations of objects and events.
D)is characterized by the rules of logic.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Organization refers to the fact that intellectual operations are

A)ordered in a chronological series.
B)parallel to each other.
C)completely independent of one another.
D)integrated with one another in a hierarchical nature.

Question 5

The substage of coordination of secondary circular reactions occurs

A)at birth.
B)at about 2-4 months of age.
C)at about 4-8 months of age
D)at about 8-12 months of age

Question 6

According to Piaget, what is the inner tendency of an organism to keep its cognitive schemes in balance and motivates development?

A)equilibrium
B)disequilibrium
C)constancy
D)passivity

Question 7

Beginning around 18 months, children begin to show evidence of the symbolic function, which can include any of the following except

A)speaking in sentences.
B)fantasy play.
C)drawing.
D)thinking logically.

Question 8

Piaget's belief that later cognitive developments are based on earlier accomplishments in an unvarying order is referred to as being

A)esoteric.
B)epigenetic.
C)cyclic.
D)systematic.

Question 9

An infant's dominant form of knowledge acquisition during the substage of secondary circular reactions is

A)repetitions focused on the infants' bodies.
B)repetitions focused on eating.
C)repetitions focused on objects and external events.
D)repetitions focuses on becoming familiar with reflexes.

Question 10

Which of the following begins a primary circular reaction?

A)An infant's thumb and mouth first come in contact unintentionally and trigger the sucking reflex.
B)An infant is given a pacifier and begins to suck on it.
C)An infant possesses an instinct that sucking a thumb is similar to sucking on a pacifier.
D)An infant is satisfied with sucking on a pacifier when he or she is not hungry.

Question 11

"I see and touch, therefore I know" is reflective of which of Piaget's stages of development?

A)sensorimotor
B)preoperational
C)operational
D)formal operational

Question 12

All of the following are examples of the substage of tertiary circular reactions except

A)infants at this stage are crawling.
B)infants engage in trial-and error processes.
C)infants have to physically try to see if one thing will fit inside another.
D)infants' thinking is entirely overt.

Question 13

Piaget believed that children's schemes develop and change as a result of all of the following factors except

A)maturation.
B)information from the physical and social world.
C)children's self-generated activity.
D)adaption.

Question 14

Piaget's called a basic unit of knowledge

A)a stage.
B)a scheme.
C)a period.
D)a framework.

Question 15

Which of the following substages marks the arrival of intentional, or goal-directed, behavior?

A)the use of reflexes
B)the use of coordination of secondary circular reactions
C)the use of secondary circular reactions
D)the use of primary circular reactions

Question 16

How do infants between about 8-12 months achieve a specific goal?

A)They begin to acquire primary circular reactions.
B)They imitate the secondary circular actions of someone who has modeled them.
C)They coordinate two previously acquired secondary circular reactions.
D)They unintentionally realize that one primary circular action causes another one.

Question 17

Which of the following is not true of assimilation?

A)It is a form of adaptation.
B)It is one of two basic processes that characterize all biological systems.
C)It is the changing of one's schemes to incorporate new information.
D)It is the complement of accommodation.

Question 18

Which is not characteristic of Piaget's view of the first substage of the sensorimotor period?

A)Infants apply typical reflexes such as sucking and grasping.
B)By seeing or hearing an object, an infant is acting on that object.
C)Behavior is mostly automatic.
D)Infants have goals in mind and then act on those goals.

Question 19

Piaget viewed children

A)as blank slates.
B)as constructing their own reality.
C)as being shaped by their environments.
D)as developing based on their genes.

Question 20

Which of Piaget's four stages, or periods, of intellectual development, do humans go through first?

A)preoperational
B)sensorimotor
C)concrete operational
D)formal operational

Question 21

Which of the following is most difficult for 2- to 3-year-old children?

A)responding to an object concretely
B)responding to an object abstractly
C)responding to an object with dual representation
D)responding to an object that represents something else

Question 22

Class inclusion refers to the knowledge that

A)all objects must belong to at least one type of class.
B)a class must always be smaller than any more-inclusive class in which it is contained.
C)a class must always include more than one subclass.
D)a superordinate class cannot include more than two subordinate classes.

Question 23

Children in the preoperational stage are most concerned with which of the following?

A)physical characteristics of things
B)what things actually are
C)real characteristics of things
D)how things work

Question 24

One of the most distinctive characteristics of the preoperational period is ____

A)inductive reasoning.
B)assimilation.
C)imitation.
D)egocentrism.

Question 25

In intellectual terms, a 3-year-old child is most like

A)a 6-month-old infant.
B)a 1-year-old child.
C)a 2-year-old child.
D)an adult.

Question 26

Seriation is a skill that refers to

A)counting objects.
B)classifying objects.
C)ordering objects.
D)dividing objects.

Question 27

All of the following are true of Piaget's formal operational stage, except that

A)it typically occurs between 11 and 16 years of age.
B)it is the final stage of thought.
C)it can be qualitatively improved upon once it is acquired.
D)it is the stage when children can think in the abstract.

Question 28

Why did Piaget describe preschool children as being "stimulus bound"?

A)Their thinking is scattered and interrupted by numerous stimuli.
B)Their thinking is very limited in all areas.
C)Their thinking is confined to the actions of objects.
D)Their thinking is confined to literal perceptual properties of objects.

Question 29

Preoperational children lack the logical rules associated with cognitive operations, the most important of which is

A)social perspective-taking.
B)reversibility.
C)sensibility.
D)facility.

Question 30

Piaget used the term "horizontal décalage" to refer to

A)combining different dimensions of a perceptual field.
B)progressive acquisition of a certain skill.
C)thinking in a systematic and logical way about abstract information.
D)seeing things from others' perspectives.

Question 31

Children at the concrete operational stage have the characteristic of

A)egocentrism.
B)perceptual centrism.
C)decentration.
D)inductive reasoning.

Question 32

A study that of infants who were shown pictures of objects found that which of the following was true for most infants who were younger than 19 months?

A)They pointed to the pictures, indicating that they knew the pictures represented other objects.
B)They tried to manipulate the pictures, as if the pictures were themselves the objects they represented.
C)They showed no interest in the pictures.
D)They looked around to see if any objects in the room matched the pictures.

Question 33

Young children's difficulties considering all factors of a situation when making a decision is called

A)perceptual centration.
B)disequilibration.
C)incorporation.
D)goal-directed behavior.

Question 34

Hypothetico-deductive reasoning is reasoning that

A)goes from the general to the specific.
B)goes beyond everyday experiences to things that have not been experienced.
C)goes from one thought to another is a systematic way.
D)goes from knowledge of the specific to making deductions.

Question 35

Children at the concrete operational stage possess the logical thinking ability that Piaget called transitive inference, which

A)enables children to measure or visually confirm the sizes of different objects.
B)enables children to perceive minute differences among many objects.
C)enables children to perform reverse mathematical operations.
D)enables children to draw conclusions without the need to double-check them through perception.

Question 36

Which of the following did Piaget not find to be true of conservation?

A)It is attained at different rates for children in different cultures.
B)Children do not accomplish all the properties of conservation at once, but do so gradually.
C)It is acquired during the formal operational stage.
D)Most 7-year-olds conserve number and mass, but not weight or volume.

Question 37

Piaget described the symbolic thought of the preschool child as

A)artistic.
B)intuitive.
C)operations based.
D)emergent literacy.

Question 38

Which of the following is not true of the concrete operational stage?

A)Thought is symbolic and logical.
B)Thought is symbolic and abstract.
C)Thought is logical and abstract.
D)Thought is goal-directed and abstract.

Question 39

The concrete operational ability to classify objects simultaneously on the basis of more than one category is called

A)multiple classification.
B)dimensional classification.
C)criteria assessment.
D)labeling.

Question 40

The knowledge that one entity can stand for something other than itself is called

A)conservation.
B)shared attention.
C)symbolic thinking.
D)representational insight.

Question 41

A major concept of Piaget's that has been questioned by more recent psychologists is

A)stages.
B)schemes.
C)operations.
D)object permanence.

Question 42

Studies performed since Piaget's time have shown that ______ can be trained to perform formal operational tasks after only brief instruction.

A)sensorimotor children
B)preoperational children
C)concrete operational children
D)animals

Question 43

Regarding Piaget's concept of the formal operational stage, more recent studies have shown that

A)children enter this stage much earlier than the age proposed by Piaget.
B)children enter this stage significantly later than the age proposed by Piaget.
C)it is not actually a stage of its own but rather part of the concrete operational stage.
D)it is not achieved by all people and probably not even by most people in the world.

Question 44

Piaget's ideas have been at the heart of some modern psycho-pedagogical strategies, particularly "discovery learning," in which children are encouraged to discover important aspects of learning through

A)active experimentation.
B)peer mentoring.
C)direct instruction.
D)a series of stages.

Question 45

The task of discovering what factor or combination of factors causes differences in the rate that a pendulum oscillates requires

A)concrete reasoning
B)technical reasoning.
C)deductive reasoning.
D)inductive reasoning.

Question 46

Studies that applied Piaget's theory were done on primates, and the findings include all of the following except

A)Monkeys and apes go through the same sensorimotor stages in the same order as humans.
B)Some species go through the stages faster than humans do.
C)The highest level of achievement is attained by species that are genetically closest to humans.
D)There is more evenness in monkeys' and apes' sensorimotor accomplishments than in humans'.

Question 47

Why is Piaget still much studied by psychologists?

A)His work is much more recent than many other theorists.
B)His stages are very detailed compared to those of many other theorists.
C)His ideas serve as the foundation of contemporary cognitive development.
D)His ideas have all proven to be correct over many years.

Question 48

Piaget's ideas have been extremely influential not only in psychology, but also in

A)anthropology.
B)political science.
C)criminology.
D)education.

Question 49

From the studies that applied Piaget's theory to animals, we can conclude that many concepts described by Piaget

A)were not meant to apply to the thought processes of any animals.
B)are involved in solving real-world problems facing most animals.
C)are applicable to the cognition of humans only.
D)are involved in the cognitive processes on humans and primates only.

Question 50

In general, Piaget's theory was one of competence-what he believed children of a certain age or stage

A)has been taught to do.
B)wanted to do.
C)were able to do.
D)actually did do.

Question 51

Regarding the timing of skills at certain ages, it has been generally found that

A)infants possess a less sophisticated knowledge about objects than Piaget suggested.
B)infants have about the same level of sophistication than Piaget suggested.
C)children are less competent in cognitive terms than Piaget suggested.
D)children are more competent in cognitive terms than Piaget suggested.

Question 52

Piaget viewed adolescents as being all of the following except

A)emotionally stressed.
B)insightful.
C)egocentric.
D)self-conscious.

Question 53

What is the most substantial limitation in applying Piaget's theory to nonhuman animals?

A)Most of Piaget's stages involve mental representation, which may be unique to humans.
B)Piaget's tasks cannot be performed by animals because their hands are not dexterous enough.
C)Animals are not able to answer the questions necessary for the analysis of Piaget's tasks.
D)Animals generally develop much more quickly than humans do, and do not go through stages.

Question 54

Which of the following ideas that Piaget had about the formal operational stage is shared by modern psychologists?

A)Adults take mental shortcuts, make estimations, and arrive at conclusions before exhausting all possibilities.
B)Formal operational thinking is typically used by adults in daily life.
C)Formal operational thinking is rare in cultures where formal schooling is not the norm.
D)Formal operational thinking is used in some contexts but not in others.

Question 55

Elkind-not Piaget-has described adolescents' belief that they are unique and invulnerable as

A)playing to an imaginary audience.
B)development of an adult identity.
C)a persona fable.
D)an intellectual awakening.

Question 56

According to Piaget, a formal operational child's thinking is characterized by all of the following except

A)requiring no referents in real life for thought.
B)being detached from reality.
C)thinking about what could be, as well as what is.
D)generating hypotheses about possibilities.

Question 57

Which of the following views stages as a useful concept if it is used more flexibly than Piaget did?

A)the core knowledge approach
B)the sociocultural approach
C)theory theorists
D)neo-Piagetian theorists

Question 58

Information-processing theorists, who dominated the field of cognitive development in the late 20th century, essentially viewed children's minds as analogous to

A)open books.
B)blank slates.
C)developing computers
D)telescopes.

Question 59

Contrary to Piaget's ideas about infants, more recent studies have shown that they may possess

A)schemes.
B)symbolic competencies.
C)operations.
D)abilities of adaptation.

Question 60

One main difference between concrete operational thinkers and formal operational thinkers is that ____

A)formal operational thinkers can learn from contemplating their own thoughts.
B)formal operational thinkers have powerful problem-solving skills.
C)concrete operational learners reflect on the content of their thinking to arrive at new insights.
D)concrete operational learners think more about ideas than about things.

Question 61

Which seems to be the best cue that even infants use to determine whether an object is animate or not?

A)warmth
B)light
C)constancy
D)self-propelled motion

Question 62

Most symbolic play, especially for children beyond 3 years of age,

A)occurs in a social setting.
B)is solitary.
C)is initiated by parents or other caregivers.
D)becomes less and less interesting.

Question 63

Modifications in children's intuitive theories are often described as reflecting

A)conceptual change.
B)biological change.
C)physical change.
D)psychosocial change.

Question 64

Urban children from technological societies today are experiencing

A)an increase of interest in acquiring biological knowledge.
B)a decreased detachment from the biological world.
C)an increase in biological knowledge.
D)a deterioration of biological knowledge.

Question 65

Which of the following most significantly provides a unique set of problems that must be faced by humans, which calls for different types of cognition?

A)society
B)culture
C)ecology
D)race

Question 66

Sociocultural theorists believe that culture most significantly reflects

A)variations that make children from different societies think a bit differently from one another.
B)the "child as a thinker," or the "epistemic child."
C)how children think, beginning in infancy.
D)objects surrounding the child, who must then make sense of them.

Question 67

In contrast to Piaget, Vygotsky emphasized that cognitive development is mediated through

A)parents.
B)culture.
C)technical advances.
D)teachers.

Question 68

Symbolic play involves a child taking a stance that is different from reality and using which of the following as part of the enactment?

A)a mental representation of the situation
B)repetitive motions of the body
C)the manipulation of objects
D)predetermined rules

Question 69

Which of the following has research not found about most 4- to 5-year-old children?

A)They understand the basics of reproduction.
B)They understand the difference between sleeping and dead animals.
C)They understand that a person who dies no longer has psychological functions.
D)They understand the concept of contamination.

Question 70

At its simplest, symbolic play involves

A)role playing, in which children pretend they are some other person.
B)acting out pretend events.
C)substituting one thing for another in a playful setting.
D)follow a story line as if they were in a theatrical performance.

Question 71

Young children's beliefs that some inanimate things act as if they are alive is called

A)animism.
B)personification.
C)personal fables.
D)an analogy.

Question 72

Theory theorists and core-knowledge theorists both believe that infants' and children's cognition

A)is not naturally programmed to make sense of information in core domains.
B)is a process of arbitrary and completely flexible knowledge acquisition.
C)is able to process all information equally well with the proper training.
D)is constrained in that they are not able to process all information equally well.

Question 73

Gopnik argued that most experts today, regardless of their theoretical orientation, believe that cognitive development consists of

A)changes in a single domain-general mechanism.
B)changes in a series of domain-specific mechanisms.
C)changes applied simultaneously to all domains.
D)changes that occur repeatedly in the same domains.

Question 74

Carey proposed that preschool children generalize what they know

A)about animals to people.
B)about people to animals.
C)about people to other people.
D)about people to objects.

Question 75

Which of the following patterns is usually characteristic of symbolic play?

A)It peaks between 18 months and 3 years, and decreases thereafter.
B)It begins at about 18 months, and increases until about 12 years.
C)It begins at about 3 years, peaks at about 9 years, and decreases thereafter.
D)It peaks between 5 and 7 years, and decreases thereafter.

Question 76

Which of the following is not true of the symbolic play of children of all cultures in the world?

A)It is based on the materials that adults provide.
B)It is based on the activities and roles of adults in their culture.
C)It includes the universal roles of mother and father.
D)It is associated with the subsistence economy.

Question 77

Children of all ages and all cultures are particularly interested in

A)babies.
B)animals.
C)objects in the sky.
D)moving toys.

Question 78

In which of the following types of play do rules have to be respected?

A)object-oriented play
B)games
C)sociodramatic play
D)physical activity play

Question 79

As children get older, the physical similarity between the objects they use in symbolic play and the real things

A)increases.
B)diminishes.
C)becomes less creative.
D)is indistinguishable.

Question 80

Children at the earliest level of understanding reproduction think that

A)babies have always existed and are delivered to parents.
B)babies have not always existed but instead need to be assembled.
C)babies need two parents to exist but think of the baby as growing from a seed.
D)babies spontaneously grow inside mothers.