Child and Human Development Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The Act dates from 1986.

The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act was passed in 1986. The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016 renamed it the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act: it banned the employment of children below 14 in all occupations, with limited exceptions such as family enterprises, and barred adolescents of 14 to 18 from hazardous work.

So the Act the question names was first introduced in 1986, even though its present name came later. 1980, 1982 and 1991 are not the years of this legislation.

Answer: D

The answer is the gonadal hormones.

At puberty the gonads, the testes and the ovaries, secrete sex hormones, the androgens such as testosterone in males and the oestrogens such as estradiol in females. Together they bring about the secondary sexual characteristics, such as breast development, a deeper voice and body hair, and sexual maturity.

Testosterone, estrogen and estradiol are each individual hormones within this group, and each acts mainly in one sex. The question asks for the hormones responsible in general, which is the group name, gonadal hormones.

Answer: B

The earliest interactions lay the foundation for trust vs. mistrust.

In Erikson's (the paper spells it 'Ericson') psychosocial theory, the first stage, from birth to about 18 months, is trust versus mistrust. When the mother or caregiver meets the infant's needs warmly and consistently, the child learns that the world is safe and people dependable; neglect or inconsistency leads to mistrust.

Autonomy versus shame and doubt is the second stage, in the toddler years. Attachment is Bowlby's and Ainsworth's concept rather than an Erikson stage, and dependency is not one of his stages.

Answer: D

The NCPCR works under the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights was set up in March 2007 under the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005. It monitors the protection of child rights under the law and policies, and it functions under the administrative control of the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (now Education) handles schooling, the Ministry of External Affairs foreign relations, and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting the media. None of them is the parent ministry of the NCPCR.

Answer: A

The common phenomenon in old age is insomnia.

With ageing, sleep becomes lighter and more broken: older adults take longer to fall asleep, wake more often at night and wake earlier, and pain, medicines, frequent urination and depression add to the problem. Difficulty in falling or staying asleep is therefore very common in the elderly.

Height decreases, not increases, in old age, as the spinal discs thin and posture stoops. Menarche is the first menstruation, an event of puberty. Substance abuse occurs in old age but is not a common feature of it.

Answer: C

Sociometry is a tool that measures a child's relationship with peers. Developed by J. L. Moreno, it asks children to name classmates they would like to sit, play or work with, and the choices are drawn as a sociogram to show stars, isolates and cliques in the group.

It is not a test of intelligence level, which needs an intelligence test. It does not diagnose behaviour problems, which need checklists or rating scales. It also does not study the relationship with parents, which is looked at through interviews or parent-child relationship scales.

Answer: C

Language development in children is promoted by story telling (i), conversation (ii) and social participation (iii). Stories give new words and sentence patterns, conversation gives practice with an adult or a peer who responds, and social participation gives a reason and an audience for speaking. So the answer is (i), (ii) and (iii).

Solitary play (iv) is play alone, with no partner to talk to, so it gives little language practice. Options that include it are wrong.

Answer: C

(A) is correct and (R) is wrong. Self-concept is the image a person has of herself or himself, including perceived abilities and limitations, so (A) is a fair definition.

(R) is wrong because self-concept is built up through comparison with others as well as with one's past self; social comparison is a main source of it. The claim that it is formed 'without social comparison' therefore fails, and the options that make (R) correct are wrong.

Answer: B

In Bandura's social learning theory the processes of observational learning run in the order attention (iv), retention (iii), production (i) and motivation (ii). The learner must first attend to the model, then remember the behaviour, then reproduce it physically, and the motivation decides whether it is performed.

The other options start with production, motivation or retention, but nothing can be retained without attention first, and nothing can be produced without retention. So (iv), (iii), (i), (ii) is the right sequence.

Answer: A

The correct matching is (a)-(v), (b)-(iv), (c)-(i), (d)-(ii). The first menstruation is menarche, authoritative parenting is the democratic style, observational learning is the work of Albert Bandura, and the ICCW (Indian Council for Child Welfare) promotes balwadis and day care centres.

Spermarche (iii) is the first ejaculation in boys, not the first menstruation, and permissive parenting (vi) is a different style from authoritative parenting. The other codes use these distractors, so only option A is right.