Child Development

Fall 2004

Fourth Exam Essay Questions

  1. What are the causes of obesity in children?  What solutions would you recommend for an obese child?

  2. Describe 4 areas of cognitive growth during the concrete operations stage.

  3. What is horizontal decalage?  Give an example.

  4. How does attention improve in middle childhood?  Use your textbook.

  5. What are the symptoms of ADD and ADHD?  What are the causes?  Discuss effective treatment.

  6. Discuss the improvements in storage and retrieval strategies that occur in middle childhood.

  7. What is IQ?  What factors contribute to it?  

  8. Describe Sternberg's Theory of intelligence.  How does it compare to what IQ tests measure?

  9. Why do Asian students outscore Americans on tests of math and science?

  10. How does children's self-esteem change in middle childhood?  What things influence our self-esteem?

  11. What are 3 strategies for self-regulation used in middle childhood?  How can we help them improve them?

  12. How are fathers important for the well-being of their children?

  13. Why are siblings different from each other given that they share 50% of their genes and the same parents?

  14. What are the effects of divorce on school age children?  What recommendations would you make to change existing divorce laws to better protect children?


Third Exam Essay Questions

  1. Describe the major brain changes during the preschool years and how each is manifested in children's behavior.

  2. How do immunization rates for U.S. children compare with children in other countries? What causes this discrepancy?

  3. How does drawing change during the preschool years?  How can "art therapy" be used with preschoolers?

  4. How does make believe play change during the preschool years?  Why is it important to children's development?

  5. What are egocentrism, conservation, transductive reasoning, and class inclusion?  Give an example of each.

  6. What changes occur in preschooler's capacity for attention and long term memory?

  7. What is Theory of Mind?  How does it develop?

  8. Using the Interactionist Perspective, describe the changes in language in the preschool years.

  9. What is self-esteem?  How should adults help children build self-esteem?

  10. What are some strategies preschooler acquire for self-regulation?  How can adults help them develop these skills?

  11. Use nature and nurture to explain the development of gender identity.

  12. What are the most effective strategies for building morality in children?  What is the role of punishment?

  13. What are the factors that create child maltreatment, using an Ecological Systems model?


Second Exam Essay Questions

  1. Infant brains grow from 30%-70% of their adult size before age 2.  What accounts for this growth?  What behavioral changes are possible as a result of this growth?

  2. What is the best food for babies and why? (There are at least 6 reasons)

  3. Describe the cephalocaudal/proximodistal nature of motor skills development.

  4. Describe classical conditioning and give an example relevant to infancy.

  5. How does operant conditioning shape a child's behavior.  Use 2 examples to illustrate your answer, one using a negative and one using a positive reinforcer.

  6. Describe and give examples of assimilation and accommodation.

  7. What is a circular reaction? Give 2 examples of different types.

  8. According to Information Processing, describe the growth in infant cognition.  Be sure to consider attention, storage, and retrieval.

  9. Describe the acquisition of language from the Interactionist Perspective.

  10. According to Vygotsky, how do we help children's cognitive development? Give an example.

  11. Name 7 emotions that are present in the first year.  How do they emerge and change?

  12. How do children acquire the ability to regulate their own emotions?

  13. What are the 3 types of temperaments?  Describe them.

  14. What are the types of  attachment? 

  15. What determines the process of attachment?


First Exam Essay Questions

  1. Compare the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky.

  2. Describe your own current micro, meso, exo, macro and chrono environments.

  3. Describe each of the following methods of gathering data in one or two sentences:  naturalistic and laboratory observation; interviews; psycho-physiological; tests.

  4. Define longitudinal, cross-sectional and cross-sequential designs.  Which one is strongest? Why?

  5. Describe the methods of data gathering and research design in the article you read in class.

  6. Name 5 patterns of inheritance and describe them.

  7. What are canalization and reaction range?  How are they related to each other? Give an example of a trait that is highly canalized and one that has a wide reaction range.

  8. Describe passive, evocative and active gene-environment correlation.  Give an example of each.

  9. Describe brain development (in broad terms) in the germinal, embryonic and fetal periods.  Be sure to include the terms proliferation, migration and differentiation.

  10. Why do teratogens often have inconsistent effects on developing organisms?

  11. Describe the 3 stages of labor.

  12. What can neonates taste? smell?  hear?  feel? 

  13. Besides hormones, what may explain post-partum depression?


Final Exam Questions (not the final list of questions, check again after 12/2)

  1. Describe how the brain develops from conception through age 12.  Pay attention to each of theses processes: proliferation, migration, differentiation, sculpting, synaptic exuberance, synaptic pruning.  Illustrate the importance of each change with an example of a behavioral change.

  2. Describe cognitive development from a Piagetian point of view.  Include the major achievements of each stage.

  3. Describe cognitive development from an Information Processing point of view.  Include changes in attention, storage strategies, retrieval strategies, working memory and long-term memory in infancy, early childhood and middle childhood.

  4. "How much of a cake is the recipe and how much is the ingredients?"  Discuss the meaning of this quote.  Use examples of heritability, bi-directional influence, and parental (environmental) influence from throughout the book to make your case.  

  5. Ecological Systems Theory helps us to remember that most issues of child development have complex origins.  Find an example of an issue that is better understood by applying the Ecological Systems model from each of the age ranges we studied.  Describe each issue using the model.

  6. From infancy to age 12 children's emotions, and their ability to manage them change.  Describe the pattern of the emergence emotions.  Describe the process of acquiring self-regulation of emotions.

  7. How does the view of the self emerge and change?  How can adults help children build self esteem?

  8. Psychology is different from other ways of understanding human behavior because it relies on empirical evidence.  Summarize in one sentence each of the methods for gathering data and each of the research designs described in chapter one.  Find an example of each in the textbook from chapters 6-13.