Child and Human Development Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The Indian philosopher of naturalistic education is Rabindranath Tagore.

Tagore believed children learn best in freedom and in close contact with nature. At Santiniketan (1901), later Visva-Bharati, classes were held outdoors under the trees, and education was built round nature, art, music and the child's own activity, which is why he is classed as a naturalist in educational philosophy.

Gandhiji's Basic Education (Nai Talim) centred on productive craft work, Tarabai Modak pioneered pre-school education and the Anganwadi idea for rural children, and Gijubhai Badheka adapted Montessori methods in his Bal Mandir; none is the standard example of naturalism.

Answer: D

Adolescence is a transitional period.

Adolescence is the transition between childhood and adulthood. It begins with the biological changes of puberty and ends when the young person takes on adult roles, and the timing and meaning of that passage depend on the culture, which is why the definition mentions the cultural environment.

All of life is developmental, so 'developmental period' does not single out adolescence. A critical period is a narrow window when a particular ability must develop, and adolescence is a time of rapid change rather than stagnation.

Answer: A

Anoxia during birth can lead to cerebral palsy.

Anoxia, a lack of oxygen to the baby's brain during labour and delivery (for example from a compressed umbilical cord or a long, difficult birth), can kill or damage brain cells that control movement, producing cerebral palsy.

Anorexia is an eating disorder. Teratogens act during pregnancy, not during the birth process itself. Maternal anxiety may affect the pregnancy but is not a direct cause of brain damage at birth.

Answer: B

The rights of the child were laid down by the U.N. Declaration.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Child on 20 November 1959. Its ten principles set out the child's right to special protection and to opportunities to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and socially. It was followed by the binding UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.

WHO deals with health and UNICEF is the agency that works for children, but neither adopted the declaration. India's Ministry of Women and Child Development implements policy within the country.

Answer: D

The term is juvenile delinquency.

Juvenile delinquency is a legal and social term covering a wide range of behaviour by children and adolescents, from socially unacceptable acts such as acting out in school, through status offences such as running away, to criminal acts such as theft.

Conduct disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis for a persistent pattern of aggression and rule-breaking, not a label for the whole range of offences. Truancy is only one such behaviour, and emotional disorder concerns anxiety or mood problems.

Answer: C

These are the five elements of Emotional Intelligence.

Daniel Goleman's model of emotional intelligence (1995) lists self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills: knowing and managing one's own emotions, and recognising and handling the emotions of others.

Social intelligence is the narrower ability to get along with others, spiritual intelligence concerns meaning and values, and bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is one of Gardner's multiple intelligences, the skilled use of the body.

Answer: B

The keyed sequence is dilation, birth, detachment of the placenta, cutting of the umbilical cord.

Child development texts divide labour into three stages: the first is dilation of the cervix, the second is the birth (expulsion) of the baby, and the third is the afterbirth, when the placenta separates from the wall of the uterus and is expelled. This option is the only one that begins with dilation and puts birth second.

Every other option puts birth or cutting of the cord before dilation, which is impossible, because the cervix must dilate before the baby can pass. In hospital practice the cord is usually clamped and cut soon after birth, often before the placenta comes out, but the key follows the textbook order of the stages and only one option is consistent with it.

Answer: A

The model is Urie Bronfenbrenner's.

Bronfenbrenner's bioecological theory places the developing child at the centre of nested systems: the microsystem (family, school), the mesosystem (links between them), the exosystem (settings that affect the child indirectly, such as a parent's workplace), the macrosystem (culture and values) and the chronosystem (change over time).

Piaget described stages of cognitive development, Erikson (spelled 'Erison' in the paper) stages of psychosocial development, and Vygotsky the role of social interaction and the zone of proximal development. None of them pictured the environment as nested structures.

Answer: D

The answer is the developmentally appropriate curriculum.

Developmentally appropriate practice, set out by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, is a framework of principles and guidelines for teaching young children in ways that suit their age, their individual development and their social and cultural context. It is not one programme but a set of guidelines that programmes follow.

HighScope, the Creative Curriculum and Reggio Emilia are particular curricula or approaches, each with its own methods, rather than a general framework of best practice.

Answer: C

Moderate retardation corresponds to IQ 36-52 in the Stanford-Binet classification.

The older classification of intellectual disability by Stanford-Binet scores puts mild retardation at roughly 52 to 68, moderate at 36 to 51, severe at 20 to 35, and profound below 20. Of the ranges offered, 36-52 is the moderate band.

53-70 is the mild band, and 22-36 lies mostly in the severe band. 100-120 is average to above average intelligence, not retardation at all.