Preassessment Quiz

Pre-Enrollment Quiz

PSY 311 Human Development

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A. Previous Course Work

Question 1: Did you take PSY 200: Psychology as a Natural Science or its equivalent (PSY 200 introduces students to physiological psychology, perception, learning, thinking, and motivation)?

a. Yes
b. No

Question 2: Did you take PSY 204: Psychology as a Social Science or its equivalent (PSY 204 introduces students to personality, social, and developmental psychology)?

a. Yes
b. No

B. Graphic Comprehension and Interpretation

Question 3a: Television and childhood. What does the following graph show?

(Source: Carol Siegelman and David Shaffer. Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1995.)

a. It shows the number of children at various ages who watch television each day.
b. It shows the number of hours of television children of various ages watch daily.
c. It shows the time of day that children of various ages watch the most television.
d. It shows the number of television shows children of various ages watch each day.

Question 3b: According to the same graph (Question 3a), children who watch the MOST TV are approximately how old?

a. 9 years
b. 11 years
c. 14 years
d. 16 years

Question 4a: Play and early childhood. What kinds of play increase in frequency from age 2 to age 4 1/2 years?

(Source: Carol Siegelman and David Shaffer. Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1995.)

a. solitary and parallel
b. parallel and associative
c. associative and cooperative
d. cooperative and solitary

Question 4b: Using the same graph (Question 4a), list the kinds of play a three-year-old child is most likely to be involved in, from most to least frequently.

a. associative, parallel, cooperative, solitary
b. parallel, solitary, associative, cooperative
c. associative, cooperative, parallel, solitary
d. none of the above (it is impossible to answer this question from the information provided)

Question 5: Predictors of parenting. According to this model, what does father's depressed mood influence?

(Source: Carol Siegelman and David Shaffer. Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1995, **See reference section.)

a. family economic pressure
b. mother's depressed mood
c. mother's depressed mood and marital conflict
d. marital conflict and nonnurturant uninvolved parenting

C. Text Comprehension and Interpretation

All text is from the textbook required for this course: Life-span Human Development Carol Siegelman and David Shaffer. Brooks/Cole Publishing, 1995.

Question 6: Infant cognitive development. After reading the following text, determine which of the following statements is true.

"According to Piaget, infants are born lacking the concept of object permanence. This is the very fundamental understanding that objects and persons continue to exist when they are no longer visible or otherwise detectable to the senses... Very young infants, because they rely so heavily on their senses, seem to operate as though objects exist only when they are perceived or acted on. According to Piaget, the infant must "construct" the notion (i.e., actively create the knowledge) that reality exists apart from one's experience of it."

From Sigelman & Shaffer (1995), p. 177.

a. Infants are born with the knowledge that objects exist even if they cannot be seen.
b. Infants must develop the knowledge that objects exist even if they cannot be seen.
c. Very young infants believe their mothers exist even when their mothers are out of the room.
d. a and c
e. b and c

Question 7: Temperament in infancy.

"As parents well know, different babies have different personalities. In trying to describe infant personality, researchers have focused on aspects of temperament: tendencies to respond in predictable ways. Although different researchers have defined infant temperament in different ways, one useful scheme focuses on individual differences in emotionality (the tendency to become upset by events), activity (the infant's typical vigor and pace of activity), and sociability (a preference to be with others versus a tendency toward shyness and withdrawal)."

From Sigelman & Shaffer (1995), p. 70-71.

Little Jason reacts very strongly to new foods and new people, often beginning to cry. Jason may be high on:

a. emotionality
b. activity
c. sociability
d. temperament

Question 8: Parents and adolescents.

"Does watching their children become physically and sexually mature and begin dating affect middle-aged parents? Could it even trigger a full-blown mid-life crisis? To find out, Silverberg and Steinberg (1990) asked the parents of first-born 10 to 15 year olds to complete scales measuring their self-esteem, satisfaction with life, level of psychological distress, and mid- life identity concerns (e.g., the extent to which they were reevaluting their life choices and wondering if their lives could have turned out better). The researchers also assessed the degree to which the adolescent of the house had already experienced the physical changes of puberty and become involved in mixed-sex peer activities such as dating."

"The findings were quite interesting. Parents whose adolescents were highly involved in dating and other mixed-sex peer activities showed more intense mid-life concerns, greater psychological distress, and lower life satisfaction than parents whose children were not as heavily into a teenage life style. This was true mainly amoung parents who were not very invested in their jobs possibly because their well-being hinged more on what was happening at home."

From Sigelman & Shaffer (1995), p. 402.

From Silverberg and Steinberg's (1990) research, what would you conclude about families whose adolescents date a lot and are heavily involved in a teenage lifestyle?

a. The parents are better adjusted.
b. The parents experience a mid-life crisis.
c. The parents are less well-adjusted, especially if the parents are not invested in their jobs.
d. They do not differ from families whose adolescents are not heavily involved in a teenage lifestyle.

Question 9a: Intelligence. After reading the following text, determine which of the following statements is true.

"There is no clear consensus about what inteligence is. Piaget defined intelligence as "adaptive thinking or action". Other experts have offered different definitions, many of them centered in some way on the ability to think abstractly or to solve problems effectively. Early definitions of intelligence tended to reflect the assumption that intelligence is innate intellectual ability, genetically determined and fixed at conception. But it has now become clear that intelligence is not fixed. Instead, it is changeable and subject to environmental influence, for an individual's test scores may vary often considerably over a lifetime."

From Sigelman & Shaffer (1995), p. 420.

a. Intelligence is determined at birth by the genes.
b. Psychologists agree on the definition of intelligence.
c. People can learn a lot across the course of development, but their basic intelligence stays the same.
d. An individual's intelligence changes over his/her lifetime.

Question 9b: Using the same text (Question 9a), which of the following have been proposed as a definition of intelligence?

a. adaptive thinking/action
b. abstract thinking
c. effective problem-solving
d. innate intellectual ability
e. all of the above

D. Cognitive Level: Formal Operational Thought

Question 10: An experiment was conducted to determine the effects, if any, of water and plant food on plant growth. In some conditions the plants were given water, and in some they were not. Strictly on the basis of the effects on plant growth represented by the diagrams below (and disregarding any prior knowledge) , which one of the following statements would you say is true?

a. Both water and plant food contribute to plant growth.
b. Neither water nor plant food contribute to plant growth.
c. Water contributes to plant growth, but plant food does not.
d. Plant food contributes to plant growth, but water does not.

References

In Sieglman, C.K. and Shaffer, D.R. (1995). Life-span human development (2nd Ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Bricks/Cole.

Adapted from Conger, R.D., Conger, K.J., Elder, G.H., Jr., Lorenz, F.O., Simons, R.L., and Witbeck, L.B. (1992). A family process model of economic hardship and adjustment of early adolescent behavior. Child Development 63:526-541.

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Contact Prof. Smith for question about the test. Page maintained by Brian Wells . Last updated by Brian Wells on September 4, 2001.