My EPPP Practice Questions: Lifespan Big 6

a. homozygous
When a trait is due to a dominant gene, an offspring will manifest the trait if he/she inherits
only a single dominant gene from one parent. In contrast, when a trait is due to a recessive
gene, an offspring will manifest the trait only if he/she inherits the recessive gene from both
parents (i.e., only when he/she is homoyzygous with regard to that gene).

a. Klinefelter
Klinefelter syndrome occurs in males and is due to the presence of two or more X
chromosomes along with a single Y chromosome. Symptoms include smaller-than-normal
genitalia, the development of breasts during puberty, infertility, long legs with a short trunk,
and, in some cases, learning disabilities and behavioral problems.

b. hippocampus
There is consistent evidence that neurogenesis continues throughout the lifespan in the
hippocampus and olfactory bulb. (See, e.g., P. S. Erikkson et al., Neurogenesis in the adult
human hippocampus, Nature Medicine, 4, 1313-1317, 1998.) There have also been some
reports of postnatal neurogenesis in certain area of the cortex and a few other areas of the
brain, but these findings have not been consistently replicated.

c. the child’s parents, teachers, and classmates
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model distinguishes between the microsystem, mesosystem,
exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem. The former is the child’s immediate setting and
includes the child’s family and school.

a. what a child can accomplish alone and what he/she can accomplish with help
The zone of proximal development is central to Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development.
This response best describes what it represents.

c. 7
Piaget proposed that it is not until the concrete operational stage (ages 7 to 11) that children
are capable of mental operations, which are logical rules for transforming and manipulating
information. He believed that children younger than age 7 could be taught to memorize
simple math facts (e.g., 2 plus 2 equals 4) but that children must be in the concrete
operational stage before they are able to truly understand addition and subtraction.

d. the progressive acquisition of related skills within the same stage of development.
Piaget found that children acquire related skills in a predictable order – e.g., they conserve
number and mass first, followed by weight and volume. He concluded that this horizontal
decalage occurs because tasks that appear to be similar actually differ in complexity.

c. animism
Animism is characteristic of the preoperational stage and is the belief that inanimate objects
have lifelike characteristics.

c. recent long-term memory
Recent long-term (secondary) memory is usually most affected by increasing age, followed by
working memory. The other aspects of memory listed in the answers are relatively unaffected
by normal aging.

d. identity, stability, constancy
According to Kohlberg, a child recognizes that he/she is a boy/girl by age three (gender
identity). Later the child realizes that gender is stable over time (stability) and, by age 7, that
gender is constant across different situations (constancy).

b. child maladjustment is related to incompatibility between the child’s temperament and
the parents’ caregiving behaviors
Thomas and Chess have written extensively on infant temperament and have related
maladjustment in children to a lack of fit between the child’s temperament and
characteristics of the environment, especially the parents’ behaviors.

a. low in control and low in warmth
Baumrind (1991) distinguished between four parenting styles based on level of control and
warmth. As defined by Baumrind, rejecting/neglecting parents are low in both control and
warmth, and her research found that children of these parents have the worst outcomes –
e.g., they are often antisocial, use drugs and alcohol, and obtain low scores on measures of
cognitive ability.

d. identity foreclosure
An individual exhibiting identity foreclosure has adopted an identity that has been suggested
by a parent or other influential person.

a. phonemes from all languages.
Babbling involves the repetition of vowel and consonant sounds – e.g., bi-bi-bi and da-da-da.
It initially consists of phonemes from all languages; but, by about 9 months, it narrows to
include the sounds of the child’s native language only.

a. telegraphic speech
The use of two words to express a sentence (e.g., “more juice” for “give me more juice”) is
referred to as telegraphic speech.

c. impatient or overstimulating
Research by Ainsworth and her colleagues has found that babies exhibiting an
insecure/avoidant attachment pattern often have mothers who are either very impatient and
nonresponsive or overstimulating.

a. disorganized
Main, a student of Ainsworth, found that about 80% of abused children exhibit a
disorganized-disoriented attachment pattern in the “strange situation.”

c. improving parents’ child management skills
Patterson’s coercive family interaction model stresses the impact of parental behavior and
parent-child interactions on the development of highly aggressive behavior in children, and
his parent management training focuses on teaching parents better disciplinary and other
childrearing skills.

b. rules can be changed by consensus
Piaget distinguished between two stages of moral development – heteronomous and
autonomous. Children in the autonomous stage believe that rules can be changed by
consensus.

c. thirteen to fifteen
The studies have generally found that younger children have less trouble adjusting to a
stepparent than do older school-age children and adolescents, with longitudinal research by
Hetherington (1993) and others suggesting that adjusting to a stepparent is especially difficult
when remarriage occurs when the child is in early adolescence.

a. the degree of open conflict between the parents
One of the most consistent findings of the research is that open hostility and conflict between
divorced parents is predictive of poorer adjustment for the children.

a. boys have more interactions with their teachers and tend to receive more feedback
Recent research suggests that boys continue to get more attention from both male and female
teachers, especially attention that fosters better academic performance.
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