Child and Human Development Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Egocentrism in preschool children leads to animistic thinking, irreversibility and perception-bound thinking, items (a), (b) and (c).

In the preoperational stage, children cannot take another view and so attribute life to objects (animism), cannot mentally reverse an operation (irreversibility) and are led by how things look (perception-bound thought). Metacognition, thinking about one's own thinking, is a later development in the school years and is not a feature of preschool egocentric thought, so the codes with (d) are wrong.

Answer: A

Both (A) and (R) are correct.

Between two and six years, children improve in perception, attention and logical thinking. This follows from brain development: myelination of nerve fibres and the pruning of synapses, with the brain growing from about 70 to 90 percent of its adult weight. The reason is correct and it accounts for the change in skills, so no option that calls either statement wrong can be right.

Answer: C

The assertion is correct but the reason is wrong, so the answer is the third code.

An authoritative parenting style is democratic and rational, and it respects the child's rights while keeping firm limits. The reason claims that such a style may lead children to disrespect their parents, which is the opposite of what is found: this style is linked to better self-control and regard for parents, whereas the permissive style is the one linked to poor respect.

Answer: D

Both (A) and (R) are correct.

Researchers in human development borrowed ethnography from anthropology to find the cultural meaning of the behaviour of children and adults. The reason states how the method works, by participant observation, to understand a culture's own values and social processes. Both statements are true, so no code that calls either wrong applies.

Answer: B

According to Maslow, the needs from the base upwards are physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualisation, which is IV, III, I, V, II.

The lower needs must be satisfied before the higher ones can become dominant. Putting love before safety, or self-actualisation anywhere but at the top, reverses the hierarchy. A simple way to remember it is that a person who is hungry or unsafe does not think of belonging or achievement first, so the needs of the body come at the bottom, then safety, then belonging and love, then esteem, and last the fulfilment of one's potential.

Answer: B

In order of cognitive attainment the items run reflexive schemes, object permanence, deferred imitation, centration, hierarchical classification, (b), (a), (c), (d), (e).

Reflexive schemes belong to the first months of the sensorimotor stage, object permanence to its later part, and deferred imitation to the end of that stage at about 18 months. Centration is a feature of the preoperational stage and hierarchical classification belongs to the concrete operational stage, which comes last. Each item is a milestone of Piaget's account of development, so the correct order follows the stages of thought from the sensorimotor period through the preoperational to the concrete operational stage.

Answer: B

In Kohlberg's stages the order is punishment and obedience, instrumental purpose, good boy - good girl, social order maintaining, social contract, (b), (c), (a), (e), (d).

The first two are pre-conventional, the next two conventional, and the social contract orientation is post-conventional. The codes that place good boy - good girl before the instrumental purpose orientation reverse stage two and stage three. Kohlberg's six stages are grouped in three levels, and a person moves through them in this fixed order, so each earlier stage must be completed before the next appears.

Answer: A

The correct matching is a-v, b-iv, c-ii, d-i, e-iii, the first code.

Vygotsky is linked with the socio-cultural theory, Konrad Lorenz with ethology, Piaget with cognitive development, Freud with the psychoanalytic theory and Erikson with the psychosocial theory. Social learning, option vi, belongs to Bandura and is not matched here. Ethology studies behaviour in terms of evolution and instinct, as Lorenz did with imprinting in geese, while the psychosocial theory of Erikson describes eight stages of identity and social development through life.

Answer: B

The developmental period from birth to about 8 to 12 months is known as infancy, the first stage of life in which the baby depends wholly on others for food and care. Some books extend infancy to the end of the first year or two.

A toddler is a child from about one to three years who has begun to walk, a teen is an adolescent between 13 and 19 years, and peer is a person of equal age or status, which is not a stage of life at all. So infancy is the term.

Answer: D

The assertion is wrong and the reason is correct. Premature babies tend to have poorer, not better, social adjustment later in life than babies born at full term, partly because of their health problems and early separation.

The reason is correct, since parental over protectiveness harms their behavioural response, making them dependent. So the fourth code is right, and the codes accepting the assertion are wrong.

Studies of premature babies report that they are more prone to feeding and behaviour problems and that parents tend to protect them over much, which makes them anxious and dependent. This is why the reason is right while the assertion is wrong.