1. Opponents of the Convention on the Rights of the Child
a. maintain that its provisions would shift the burden of child rearing from the family to the state.
b. believe that investing in children yields valuable returns to a nation's economy.
c. are mostly located in war-torn nations.
d. argue that it should contain child abuse and neglect protections.
2. The field of child development now recognizes that __________ is among the most powerful tools for preventing developmental problems and enhancing children's quality of life.
a. family therapy
b. sound public policy
c. high-quality child care
d. early IQ testing
3. Which of the following countries has the highest teenage pregnancy rate?
a. Poland
b. Canada
c. The United States
d. Mexico
4. Which of the following major theories in child development primarily emphasizes nurture rather than nature as an important influence?
a. Ethology
b. information processing
c. the psychoanalytic perspective
d. behaviorism
5. Dynamic system theorists regard development as
a. web of fibers branching out in many directions.
b. static.
c. Stagewise
d. a single, continuous line
6. Twelve-year-old Ross lives in a country with very low governmental standards for public education. As a result, he is barely literate. The public policies that impact Ross's education are part of the
a. Macrosystem
b. exosystem.
c. mesosystem.
d. Microsystem
7. Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural theory focuses on
a. the child's mind, body, and physical and social worlds, which form an integrated system that guides mastery of new skills.
b. how the values, beliefs, customs, and skills of a social group are transmitted to the next generation.
c. the ways in which evolution and heredity influence behavior and development.
d. the child as a developing organism within a complex system of relationships affected by multiple levels of the surrounding environment.
8. According to Piaget's theory, thought becomes abstract in the __________ stage.
a. concrete operational
b. preoperational
c. formal operational
d. sensorimotor
9. __________ has been used to relieve a wide range of serious developmental problems, such as persistent aggression and extreme fears.
a. Behavior modification
b. Social-cognitive theory
c. Observational learning
d. Modeling
10. According to B. F. Skinner's operant conditioning theory,
a. children actively construct knowledge as they manipulate and explore the world
b. development is a discontinuous process
c. modeling is the most powerful source of development
d. the frequency of behavior can be increased by following it with reinforcers.
11. Which of the following is a major criticism of Freud's theory?
a. It was based on the problems of sexually repressed, well-to-do adults, not on direct study of children.
b. It ignores the value of the clinical, or case study, method.
c. It mostly ignores milestones of infant and toddler development
d. It does not acknowledge the individual's unique life history as worthy of study and understanding.
12. Locke regarded development as __________ and largely influenced by __________.
a. discontinuous; nurture
b. continuous; nurture
c. discontinuous; nature
d. continuous; nature
13. Theories differ from mere opinion and belief in that
a. they cannot be tested in a research setting.
b. they are usually too abstract to be used as a basis for practical action.
c. they provide the ultimate truth
d. their continued existence depends on scientific verification.
14. The ethical principle of __________ requires special interpretation when participants cannot fully appreciate the research goals and activities.
a. informed consent
b. knowledge of results
c. beneficial treatments
d. privacy
15. A microgenetic design is especially useful for
a. determining the cause of cohort effects.
b. studying cognitive development.
c. measuring the impact of selective attrition and practice effects.
d. assessing emotional bonding among family members
16. Despite its convenience, cross-sectional research
a. is limited by selective attrition.
b. is threatened by practice effects.
c. cannot provide information about age-related trends.
d. does not provide evidence about individual development.
17. Over time, John, a participant in a longitudinal study, became aware of his own thoughts, feelings, and actions, and consciously revised them when the investigator was present. This is an example of
a. practice effects.
b. biased sampling
c. selective attrition.
d. cohort effects
18. __________ studies differ from correlational research only in that groups of participants are carefully chosen to ensure that their characteristics are as much alike as possible.
a. Observational
b. Laboratory experiment
c. Natural, or quasi-, experiment
d. Field experiment
19. Which of the following research methods permits inferences about cause-and-effect relationships?
a. correlational study
b. naturalistic observation
c. structured interview
d. experimental design
20. The dependent variable is the one the investigator expects to
a. be influenced by the independent variable.
b. remain stable throughout the experiment.
c. cause changes in another variable.
d. influence the independent variable.
21. In a correlational design, researchers
a. manipulate changes in the independent variable.
b. gather information on individuals, generally in natural life circumstances, and make no effort to alter their experiences.
c. can infer cause and effect.
d. use an evenhanded procedure to assign people to two or more treatment conditions.
22. To be __________, observations and evaluations of people's actions cannot be unique to a single observer.
a. externally valid
b. generalizeable
c. internally valid
d. reliable
23. Which of the following is a limitation of the clinical, or case study, method?
a. It requires intensive study of participants' moment-by-moment behaviors
b. Investigators cannot assume that their conclusions apply, or generalize, to anyone other than the individual studied.
c. It does not provide evidence about the individual's current functioning.
d. Information collected often lacks descriptive detail.
24. Neurobiological methods
a. bring together a wide range of information on one child, including interviews, observations, and test scores.
b. do not show which nervous system structures contribute to individual differences.
c. are affected by inaccurate reporting.
d. help researchers infer the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions of infants.
25. A __________ is a prediction of behavior drawn directly from a __________.
a. hypothesis; theory
b. summary; study
c. theory; hypothesis
d. confirmation; fact