Human Development and Interventions Questions and Answers

Answer: D

Erikson's final stage is ego integrity versus despair.

In late adulthood, according to Erikson, people review their lives. Those who can accept their life as meaningful, with its successes and failures, achieve ego integrity and the virtue of wisdom. Those who feel their life was wasted and that it is too late to change feel despair.

Generativity versus stagnation is the stage of middle adulthood, concerned with guiding the next generation. Ego transcendence versus ego preoccupation is Peck's later elaboration, and 'acceptance of growing old' is a description, not the name of Erikson's stage.

Answer: A

The theory is Lev Vygotsky's.

Vygotsky's sociocultural theory, developed in the 1920s and 1930s, was the first major theory to put social interaction and cultural tools, above all language, at the centre of cognitive development. Higher mental functions, he argued, begin as interactions between people and are then internalised.

Chomsky emphasised an innate language acquisition device, not social context. Roger Brown studied the stages of early language development, mainly describing children's grammar. Freud's theory concerned psychosexual development and the unconscious, not cognition and language.

Answer: C

The answer is (A) is true but (R) is false.

The Assertion is true: psychosomatic (psychophysiological) symptoms such as tension headaches, some forms of hypertension and stress-related skin and gut complaints are influenced by psychological factors and often improve with psychotherapy, relaxation training and biofeedback.

The Reason is false. In psychosomatic disorders the physical symptoms do rest on real organic pathology: an ulcer is real tissue damage and raised blood pressure is a real physiological change, even though stress helps cause them. It is in conversion (functional neurological) disorder that physical symptoms appear without organic pathology, so the Reason confuses the two.

Answer: B

The Genain quadruplets are known because all developed schizophrenia.

The Genain sisters were identical quadruplets born in the United States in 1930, and all four were diagnosed with schizophrenia. David Rosenthal and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health studied them in detail (1963), and the case is a standard illustration of a genetic contribution to schizophrenia. The sisters differed in severity and outcome, which also showed the role of environment.

They are not known for becoming artists, were conceived naturally decades before IVF existed, and did not all die early; several lived into old age.

Answer: D

The style that has not been researched as a parenting style is Punitive.

Diana Baumrind's research in the 1960s identified three parenting styles: authoritarian (high control, low warmth), authoritative (high control with warmth and reasoning) and permissive (warmth with little control). Maccoby and Martin (1983) later added the neglectful or uninvolved style.

Punishment is a disciplinary practice that may appear within a style, most often the authoritarian one, but 'punitive' is not one of the parenting styles of this research tradition. Authoritarian, permissive and authoritative are its three core styles.

Answer: A

Jerome Bruner is associated with cognitivist theory.

Bruner was a leading figure of the cognitive revolution in psychology. His work on perception (the 'New Look'), thinking strategies, the enactive, iconic and symbolic modes of representation, discovery learning and the spiral curriculum all treat learning as an active, cognitive process of constructing meaning.

Attachment theory was developed by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth. The object relations approach comes from psychoanalysts such as Melanie Klein, Fairbairn and Winnicott. Universal grammar is Noam Chomsky's concept of an innate language faculty.

Answer: C

The cluster B disorders listed are (2), (3) and (4) only.

DSM groups personality disorders into three clusters. Cluster B, the dramatic, emotional or erratic group, contains antisocial, borderline, histrionic and narcissistic personality disorders, so borderline (2), histrionic (3) and antisocial (4) belong to it.

Schizotypal personality disorder (1) is in cluster A, the odd or eccentric group, with paranoid and schizoid personality disorders. Any option that includes schizotypal is therefore wrong.

Answer: C

Mild cognitive impairment is a stage between normal aging and dementia.

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) describes a decline in memory or another cognitive ability that is greater than expected for a person's age and is noticeable on testing, but not severe enough to interfere significantly with independent daily life. A good proportion of people with MCI, especially the amnestic type, progress to Alzheimer's disease or another dementia over the following years.

Borderline intellectual functioning and mild intellectual disability are lifelong developmental levels, not a stage of decline. Clouded sensorium and delirium are acute disturbances of consciousness, not a gradual intermediate stage before dementia.

Answer: C

The correct matching is P-4, Q-2, R-1, S-3.

• P: Asperger's disorder is marked by difficulty in social interaction without significant delay in language or cognitive development (4).
• Q: Down's syndrome is caused by trisomy 21, an extra chromosome 21, and causes intellectual disability (MR) (2).
• R: Fragile X syndrome is an X-linked genetic condition that affects males more often and more severely, causing cognitive impairment; it is the most common inherited cause of intellectual disability (1).
• S: Turner's syndrome (45,X) is a chromosomal condition affecting females who have a single X chromosome (3).

The other codes give the trisomy, the X-linked condition or the female chromosomal condition to the wrong syndrome.

Answer: C

'Automatic thoughts' is a term used in CBT, cognitive behaviour therapy.

Aaron Beck described automatic thoughts as quick, unbidden evaluations that pop into the mind in response to situations, such as 'I always fail', and that shape emotion and behaviour. In cognitive therapy the client learns to notice these thoughts, test them against the evidence and replace distorted ones with more realistic alternatives.

Dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) focuses on mindfulness, distress tolerance and emotion regulation. Hypnotherapy uses trance and suggestion, and Vipassana is a Buddhist insight meditation practice; none of these is built around automatic thoughts.