Deck 9: Physical and Cognitive Development in Middle Childhood

Question 1

Two major growth spurts take place during middle childhood. The first takes place between the ages of 6 and 8, and the second growth spurt takes place between the ages of 10 and 12.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Inductive reasoning is a type of reasoning in which subordinate classes are included in larger, superordinate classes.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Typically, children over the age of 8 understand the difference between statements such as "It is on your left" or "It is on your right."

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Researchers believe that the general problem that underlies poor reading skills is difficulty with sound-letter combinations.

Question 5

During middle childhood, girls have better fine motor coordination than boys because girls' wrists mature more rapidly than boys' wrists.

Question 6

If a child can correctly answer the question "What is 8 times 8?" without pausing to calculate the answer, the child is demonstrating the cognitive skill of metacognition.

Question 7

Parents who want to help an obese child lose weight should put the child on a weight-loss diet.

Question 8

According to Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, intrapersonal intelligence refers to sensitivity to the behaviour, moods, and needs of others.

Question 9

According to Robert Siegler, children's rules for problem-solving emerge from their specific experiences.

Question 10

The ability to recall information from long-term memory without using short-term memory is called automaticity. This skill can only be acquired as a result of brain growth known as myelinization.

Question 11

Boys tend to achieve fine motor coordination more rapidly than girls do.

Question 12

Deductive logic involves going from the specific to the general.

Question 13

In Canada, a significant aspect of IQ tests is that they have been standardized for Aboriginal children.

Question 14

Automaticity is the ability to recall information from long-term memory without using short-term memory capacity.

Question 15

Research has shown that the submersion style of education is the most effective approach to help LEP students to quickly become proficient in English.

Question 16

Daniel Goleman's theory of emotional intelligence is supported by the fact that children's ability to control their emotions in childhood is strongly related to measures of academic achievement in high school.

Question 17

Improvements in logic and planning during middle childhood occur as a result of growth of the frontal lobes of the brain.

Question 18

A child who understands hierarchical classification but has never seen illustrations of the solar system would be able to create classifications of planets, suns, and moons in the solar system as easily as a child who is an amateur astronomer.

Question 19

Research shows that children as young as 7 years old sometimes express dissatisfaction with their weight and physical appearance.

Question 20

According to Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, intrapersonal intelligence is the ability to understand oneself.

Question 21

In Canada, program accommodation in the school system consists of integrating children with special needs into regular classrooms.

Question 22

Bilingual education has many educational, social, and cognitive benefits, including dementia prevention.

Question 23

All children with ADHD have significant difficulties paying attention to tasks.

Question 24

In the diagnosis of LD, intellectual functioning is not considered, but assessing acquisition, organization, retention, understanding, and use of verbal or nonverbal information skills are assessed.

Question 25

Writing tests in their home language is a legitimate educational support for LEP students in their transition to English-only instruction.

Question 26

Which of the following is NOT an accurate statement about girls' and boys' physical development during middle childhood?

A) Boys perform better than girls in activities that require strength and speed.
B) Girls are more advanced than boys in skeletal and muscular maturation, which makes girls more coordinated.
C) Girls are more advanced than boys in their rate of growth in height.
D) Boys are more advanced than girls in the development of fine motor coordination.

Question 27

Psychologists are fairly sure that diet, environmental toxins, and brain damage are causal in ADHD.

Question 28

When you imagine how a room would look with the furniture arranged differently, you are using

A) selective attention.
B) association areas.
C) spatial perception.
D) relative right-left orientation.

Question 29

Which of the following concepts does not belong with the others?

A) lateralization
B) spatial perception
C) relative right-left orientation
D) aggression

Question 30

Which of the following is NOT a cognitive function that improves significantly as a result of brain growth and development in middle childhood?

A) selective attention
B) information-processing speed
C) logic
D) person perception

Question 31

During middle childhood, a major growth spurt in the brain involves

A) the limbic system and the cranial nerves.
B) the cerebellum.
C) the cerebral cortex.
D) synaptogenesis and myelinization.

Question 32

Twenty-five percent of the Canadian population experience learning problems related to early childhood learning disabilities.

Question 33

Sleep-deprived children display many characteristics of ADHD (such as, hyperactivity, lack of coordination, and learning difficulty), and they are often misdiagnosed.

Question 34

Among school-aged children, the most significant health risks are associated with

A) accidents and obesity.
B) infectious diseases such as colds and influenza.
C) stress.
D) environmental toxins and pollutants.

Question 35

The term "dyslexia" is often used incorrectly to refer to a learning disability related to reading.

Question 36

Recent studies in Canada have shown that girls outperform boys in reading, writing, and math.

Question 37

As a result of development of the cerebral cortex in middle childhood, children show advancements in

A) language skills.
B) eye-hand coordination.
C) logic, planning, and attention.
D) regulation of emotion.

Question 38

The ability to focus cognitive activity on the important elements of a problem or situation is known as

A) myelinization.
B) selective attention.
C) association areas.
D) spatial cognition.

Question 39

In Canada, the reduction in accident rates among young children is associated with

A) media awareness campaigns.
B) reduced physical activity among children.
C) improved parental supervision and parenting practices.
D) improved social monitoring through schools, children's aid societies, etc.

Question 40

Many Aboriginal languages are now extinct or lost due to the lack of heritage-language legislation and policies in Canada.

Question 41

Which of the following is an accurate statement about weight issues in middle childhood?

A) Obesity most likely results from a genetic predisposition that promotes overeating.
B) Most children who are overweight in middle childhood will become average-weight adults.
C) Increasing a child's level of exercise and changing their eating habits will not overcome obesity in adulthood, because metabolic rates change throughout the lifespan.
D) Fear of developing an unattractive body may lead some children to diet or to become dissatisfied with their weight and physical appearance.

Question 42

Which of the following is the best example of a child's use of deductive logic?

A) Sam's mother showed him an apple cut into two pieces and an apple cut into four pieces and asked him which one was more apple. Sam was able to reply correctly, "They are the same."
B) Yousef has learned that if he is kind and cooperative with his peers, they will be nice to him.
C) Muhammed has learned that he is better at language arts than math, so he has to spend more time and work harder on his math lessons.
D) For her assignment in language arts class, Lateefah wrote a paper about what her life would be like if she were a boy.

Question 43

Which of the following is the best example of a child's use of inductive logic?

A) Wing's mother showed him an apple cut into two pieces and an apple cut into four pieces and asked him which one was more apple. Wing was able to reply correctly, "They are the same."
B) Marcel has learned that he is better at language arts than math, so he has to spend more time and work harder on his math lessons.
C) Imani has learned that if he is kind and cooperative with his peers, they will be nice to him.
D) Beverly's assignment in language arts class was to write a paper about what her life would be like if she were a boy.

Question 44

Which of the following is NOT an example of a derived word?

A) meaningless
B) vacation
C) unambiguous
D) illegible

Question 45

Which of the following statements is true about overweight and obesity rates in childhood?

A) Most overweight babies become overweight adults.
B) Being overweight in middle childhood significantly increases the likelihood of being overweight as an adult.
C) Adult obesity patterns are set more in adolescence than in other developmental stages.
D) Most overweight and obese children lose weight by adolescence.

Question 46

Concrete operations permit children to understand

A) language.
B) their own metacognitions.
C) person perception.
D) relations among objects.

Question 47

Which of the following is NOT an example of what Piaget termed "concrete operations"?

A) reversibility
B) automaticity
C) serial ordering
D) multiplication

Question 48

Inductive logic is

A) the ability to use experience to create a general principle.
B) the ability to understand another person's perspective.
C) the understanding that superficial changes to the appearance of an object do not change the essence or the reality of the object.
D) the ability to use a general principle to predict a specific outcome.

Question 49

Which of the following statements is true regarding obesity research?

A) Genetics contribute to obesity.
B) Epigenetic factors have more of an impact than genetic factors.
C) Overeating is less important than genetic predisposition.
D) Gender is a risk factor for obesity.

Question 50

Which factor is thought to raise obesity rates in children age 5-17 to 35% from 24%?

A) genetics
B) playing video games
C) parental misperceptions in noticing and identifying obesity in their children
D) socioeconomic status

Question 51

Which of the following is NOT an example of the language achievements that first occur during middle childhood?

A) the use of words that are derived from basic words by adding a prefix or a suffix
B) the ability to convince others through polite persuasion
C) the creation of complex sentences that include inflections
D) the use of correct forms of past tense and proper descriptions of events that occurred in the past

Question 52

Researchers who have studied the effects of video games on children's development have noted that all the following are associated with playing video games EXCEPT

A) improved spatial perception skills.
B) increased emotional hostility.
C) increased aggressive behaviour.
D) enhanced verbal skills.

Question 53

Cutbacks in education funding for physical education and after-school sports programs across Canada demonstrate the connection between

A) gender and level of physical activity.
B) age and weight.
C) social policy and health.
D) height and weight.

Question 54

When children understand that Chihuahuas and great Danes are both dogs and that dogs are also animals, they are demonstrating the cognitive skill known as ________.

A) class inclusion.
B) conservation.
C) reversibility.
D) deductive logic.

Question 55

To be considered obese, Body Mass Index (BMI) must be above the ________ for a child's sex and age.

A) 55th percentile
B) 65th percentile
C) 85th percentile
D) 95th percentile

Question 56

To be considered overweight, Body Mass Index (BMI) must be above the ________ for a child's sex and age.

A) 75th percentile
B) 85th percentile
C) 95th percentile
D) 97th percentile

Question 57

Which of the following statements is true regarding weight loss diets for children?

A) Children can follow the same weight loss diets as adults.
B) Increased daily exercise should eliminate the need for a diet.
C) Obese children require special diets developed and supervised by nutritional experts.
D) Restricted calorie diets are never recommended due to the fact that children are still growing and have special nutritional needs.

Question 58

A child's ability to apply cognitive skills, such as reversibility or class inclusion, to a variety of problems or situations is called

A) processing efficiency.
B) automaticity.
C) horizontal decalage.
D) metacognition.

Question 59

Deductive logic is

A) the enhanced ability to see another's perspective or point of view.
B) reasoning based on hypothetical premises that requires the ability to use a general principle to predict a specific outcome.
C) understanding that both physical actions and mental operations can be reversed.
D) the ability to analyze one's memory skills and develop a strategy to remember more facts or dates.

Question 60

A child who understands conservation of mass or volume would, of necessity, understand

A) egocentrism.
B) reversibility.
C) animism.
D) metaphors and analogies.

Question 61

Information-processing psychologists now believe that an individual's information-processing skills may depend greatly on

A) family upbringing.
B) the quality and quantity of relevant information stored in long-term memory.
C) gender.
D) the age of the individual.

Question 62

The information-processing view of children's cognitive development in middle childhood includes all of the following components EXCEPT

A) acquisition of automaticity.
B) accommodation of new schemes.
C) increased processing efficiency.
D) expanded expertise.

Question 63

Most developmental psychologists agree that the basis of children's cognitive development is

A) the capacity of long-term memory.
B) the ability to develop and employ rules and strategies for problem-solving.
C) increases in processing efficiency with age.
D) the age at which executive processes are developed.

Question 64

"Knowing about knowing" is called ________ by cognitive researchers.

A) expertise
B) inductive logic
C) automaticity
D) metacognition

Question 65

If Alec understands class inclusion, then he understands

A) what grade he will be in at school.
B) conservation of volume.
C) that the task of cleaning his room also includes taking his dirty clothes to the laundry.
D) that squirrels are mammals and that mammals are animals.

Question 66

When the teacher asked, "How many metres is 300 centimetres?" Carmen answered "three" without having to pause to compute the number of centimetres in a metre. Carmen's skill is an example of the cognitive ability of

A) metacognition.
B) mnemonics.
C) elaboration.
D) automaticity.

Question 67

To help himself remember the names of the planets in the order of their distance from the sun, Ali uses the first letter of the name of each planet to create a nonsense word. This is an example of an information-processing strategy known as

A) rehearsal.
B) inductive reasoning.
C) mnemonics.
D) systematic searching.

Question 68

Which of the following is NOT an aspect of Robert Siegler's observations of children's problem-solving abilities?

A) When very young children eventually develop a rule for problem-solving, the rule will evaluate or take into account only one dimension of the problem they are attempting to solve.
B) Children acquire strategies or rules for problem-solving by experiences such as trial-and-error and experimentation.
C) Children follow a logical sequence in their development of rules for problem-solving, and the rate at which they move through the sequence is dependent upon their experiences.
D) Cognitive development occurs as children experience progressively more complex educational demands and challenges within a formal setting.

Question 69

Which of the following is an accurate statement about the effect of schooling on children's cognitive development in middle childhood?

A) The rate of progression through the concrete operational stage does not predict how well children will reason in adolescence and childhood.
B) School experiences are linked to the emergence of advanced cognitive skills over and above normal maturation.
C) The rate of cognitive development doesn't matter, so long as everyone gets to the same place developmentally.
D) Unschooled children are also no less proficient at generalizing a learned concept or principle to some new setting.

Question 70

Zana, age 8, knows everything there is to know about Egypt. She loves to read about the pyramids, pharaohs, burial rites, and so forth. Zana's passion about Egypt has allowed her to accumulate "expert" knowledge on the subject. All of the following statements about the effects of expertise are true EXCEPT:

A) Age differences in strategy use or memory ability disappear when the younger child has more expertise than the older.
B) Using advanced information-processing skills in their areas of expertise helps children's general memory and reasoning abilities.
C) Children's capacity for creativity increases with knowledge they have about a topic.
D) The amount of knowledge a child possesses greatly affects the efficiency of her information-processing system.

Question 71

A child who can tell you what study methods work best for different subjects or what subjects are hardest for her to learn would be displaying

A) expertise.
B) metacognition.
C) deductive logic.
D) automaticity.

Question 72

In support of the hypothesis that improved processing efficiency accounts for cognitive development, researchers have found that children's thinking and response time

A) are more determined by genetic factors than by environmental factors.
B) get faster with age.
C) are determined by abilities to accommodate and assimilate new schemes.
D) are slower with maturation and increased experience.

Question 73

Which of the following represents the key contrast between Piaget's and Siegler's views on children's cognitive development?

A) horizontal decalage versus relative left-right orientation
B) age versus experience
C) metacognition versus executive processes
D) processing efficiency versus short-term storage capacity

Question 74

According to Robert Siegler, children's cognitive development occurs as a result of

A) improved operational efficiency and expanded short-term storage capacity.
B) children's physical development and improved motor skills.
C) improvements in metacognition.
D) the acquisition of basic rules that are then applied to new problems on the basis of experience.

Question 75

In middle childhood, development of the ability to read well would be least influenced by

A) strategies for writing.
B) spatial cognition.
C) phonological awareness.
D) automaticity for symbol-sound connections.

Question 76

To help himself remember the tools he was to take to his father, Antonio repeated the five-item list over and over, under his breath. This is an example of an information-processing strategy known as

A) mnemonics.
B) elaboration.
C) organization.
D) rehearsal.

Question 77

During the middle childhood years, the focus of education is

A) problem-solving.
B) socialization of the child as a productive citizen.
C) developing strategies to improve processing efficiency.
D) the ability to read and write.

Question 78

When children receive instruction in how sounds correspond to letters, they are being taught

A) the balanced approach to reading.
B) basic phonics.
C) logic and comprehension strategies.
D) mnemonics.

Question 79

Which one of the following questions would be asked by developmental psychologists who use the information-processing perspective to understand children's cognitive development?

A) What cognitive structures are common to all children?
B) How does the efficient use of short-term memory capacity change with age?
C) How do children's developing sensory capabilities and improving motor skills support their cognitive development?
D) How does one child's cognitive ability compare to or differ from the average cognitive abilities of other children of the same age?

Question 80

In Robert Siegler's research on problem-solving, children who use the preoperational-like Rule I

A) take into account only one dimension of a problem.
B) can use a formula to systematically compare relevant factors.
C) can evaluate the merits of abstract proposals.
D) calculate and estimate using multiple dimensions or characteristics.