Human Growth & Development — MCPY 605
Human development quizzes
Self-tests built section by section against Broderick & Blewitt, The Life Span: Human Development for Helping Professionals (6th ed.). 1,436 questions so far, each citing the Learning Objective and, where the text cites a source for a claim, that source too. Click to reveal answers and rationales. Not scored; for review, not assessment.
Chapter 1 — Organizing Themes in Development
LO 1.1 — Reflective practice and developmental science
Technical rationality and its limits, the “dual curriculum,” Schön’s reflective practice and its sequence, expert–novice research, partial lenses, implicit theories, self-monitoring.
20 questions 6 on deckLO 1.2 — Classic theories: stage and incremental
How developmental science emerged; what defines a stage; Freud, Erikson, and Piaget; conditioning, social learning, and information processing; the either-or issues classic theories raised.
32 questions 15 on deckLO 1.3 — Multidimensional and systems theories
Bidirectional causation across levels, Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory and the culture critique, life span theory and Baltes’s architecture of supports, and the Juliana case.
18 questions 14 on deckLO 1.4 — Core developmental issues
Why nature and nurture are not separable, neuroplasticity and critical periods, universality and specificity — WEIRD samples, race as construction, the SES conflation, cross-cultural studies.
19 questions 8 on deckLO 1.5 — Risk and resilience
Developmental psychopathology, multifinality and equifinality, trauma and the long-term follow-up studies, mediators and moderators, risk models, resilience as a systems property, steeling and sensitization.
29 questions 14 on deckApplications — Practice and evidence
Cultural competence standards across three professions, the research–practice gap and translational research, prevention typologies, and how to tell whether a claim rests on real evidence.
20 questions 1 on deckChapter 2 — Genetics, Epigenetics, and the Brain
LO 2.1 — Nature and nurture
Coaction as the claim that neither heredity nor environment ever causes an outcome alone, the faces-and-vase illusion, and why understanding coaction removes the value of blame.
4 questionsLO 2.2 — The genome
Chromosomes and karyotypes, DNA and mitosis, what the Human Genome Project found, transcription and translation and the POMC example, gene expression versus regulation, alleles and dominance, polygenic effects, SNPs and GWAS.
15 questionsLO 2.3 — The epigenome
Epigenesis old and new, Gottlieb on levels of influence, transcription factors and receptors with testosterone as the example, methylation and acetylation and miRNAs, and Meaney’s licking-and-grooming studies.
13 questionsLO 2.4 — Prenatal and early postnatal development
Conception through birth, the placenta, twinning, neurons and myelination, neurulation and migration, the brain structures of Box 2.1, the DeCasper and Wiesel–Hubel studies and the cataract sleeper effect, synaptogenesis and pruning, experience-expectant versus experience-dependent, and imaging technologies.
23 questionsLO 2.5 — Early atypical development
Recessive and dominant defective alleles, the Agouti mouse, the Caspi MAOA findings, chromosomal abnormalities, teratogens and FASD with the four moderators of impact, thalidomide, prenatal and postnatal nutrition and the Dutch famine, and the stress system of Box 2.2.
28 questionsLO 2.6 — Biology and experience
Social determinants of health, biological embedding, the immune system and why cortisol yields more inflammation under chronic stress, the history of child protection, the ACE study and the expanded Philadelphia measure, NR3C1 and hypermethylation, and CRP.
22 questionsApplications — Nature, nurture, and healthy beginnings
“To a large extent nature is nurture,” maternal stress as a thermostat for fetal systems, pregnancy-related anxiety, CBSM and MomCare, SSRI guidance, preterm and low birth weight rates and disparities, maternal ACE scores, infant massage, and upstream prevention.
16 questionsChapter 3 — Cognitive Development in the Early Years
LO 3.1 — Piaget’s constructivist theory
Adaptation through assimilation and accommodation, Piaget’s methods and biography, the constructivist stance, and the stage controversy including domain specificity.
17 questions 9 on deckLO 3.2 — The sensorimotor stage
Habituation and preferential looking, face perception and the other-race effect, object permanence and the Baillargeon challenge, recognition versus recall, and intentional action.
28 questions 18 on deckLO 3.3 — Preoperational thought
Centration and decentration, the three executive functions, number conservation and Gelman’s magic number games, and theory of mind through false belief.
35 questions 23 on deckLO 3.3 — Language development
Phonology through pragmatics, the bilingual child, parentese and verbal responsiveness, the “30 million word gap” and what later research found, and narrative skill.
37 questions 24 on deckLO 3.4 — Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
Tools and signs, mediated learning, scaffolding and the zone of proximal development, intersubjectivity, and private speech becoming inner speech.
20 questions 11 on deckApplications — Practice with young children
Adult cognitive egocentrism, sibling rivalry and childhood fears, screen time, school readiness, curriculum evaluation, and early childhood education.
26 questions 1 on deckFocus — Autism Spectrum Disorders
The Kanner–Asperger history, diagnostic criteria and adaptive functioning, brain and genetic findings, the vaccine evidence, and treatment approaches.
26 questions none on deckChapter 4 — Emotional and Social Development in the Early Years
LO 4.1 — Emotions: functions, nature and development
Damasio’s Phineas Gage matrix; LeDoux’s low road and what it implies for phobias and PTSD; Izard’s basic emotions versus emotion schemas; Sroufe and the orthogenetic principle; emotion regulation as co-regulation; synchrony and why normal interaction is “messy”; the still-face paradigm and its three response patterns; the visual cliff and social referencing.
17 questionsLO 4.2 — Attachment: caregiving, culture, and biology
The WEIRD critique; Bowlby’s break with Klein; Ainsworth from Uganda to the Strange Situation; attachment as a system serving proximity maintenance, secure base and safe haven; working models; why stranger anxiety is not universal; mind-mindedness. Plus Box 4.3 on polyvagal theory — the two vagal complexes, the three subsystems, neuroception, HRV, and Grossman’s critique.
17 questionsLO 4.3 — Attachment quality
The Strange Situation and why all four patterns count as attachments; why maternal sensitivity is only marginally predictive and how secure base provision differs; the anxious ambivalent and avoidant patterns and the heart-rate dissociation; the disorganized category, why its originators regretted the name, and its prevalence; AMBIANCE; the role reversal at 4 to 6 and the two controlling styles.
18 questionsChapter 5 — The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years
LO 5.1 — The self-system
James’s I and Me and his three “Me” selves; self-concept versus self-esteem and the role of pretensions; Cooley’s looking-glass self and Mead’s reflected appraisals; the Buddhist no-self contrast; cultural differences in self-description.
9 questionsLO 5.2 — Early development of the self-system
The pre-self, agency, and mutual gaze; the mirror and body-as-obstacle tests and the cross-cultural comparisons that explain their timing; the three traditions in self-regulation research; co-regulation as the earliest task; the self-conscious emotions and the guilt versus shame distinction.
16 questionsLO 5.3 — Parenting and emotion regulation
Warmth and demandingness, the four parenting styles and their outcomes, behavioral versus psychological control, why the correlations are modest, the cross-cultural common core, power assertion versus psychological control versus induction, time-out done properly, and the blurring line between spanking and abuse.
18 questionsLO 5.4 — Conscience and the moral self
Induction to internalization to conscience; Hoffman’s minimum sufficiency principle; committed compliance and Kochanska’s finding that only attachment security reaches fearless toddlers; humanity’s moral core and the infant helper/hinderer studies.
9 questionsChapter 6 — Realms of Cognition in Middle Childhood
LO 6.1 — Brain and behavior
What accounts for brain growth after age 6; white matter, the corpus callosum and motor control; ADHD prevalence and symptoms; the finding that the difference is often a delay of up to five years in the middle prefrontal cortex; the dimensional argument.
6 questionsLO 6.2 — Cognitive development
Vosniadou’s round-Earth models; decentering and reversibility; abstract versus concrete logic problems; domain specificity and expertise; the information processing approach and executive functions; the memory stores, scripts, and digit span; how prior knowledge produces false memories; and children’s eyewitness testimony.
17 questionsLO 6.3 — Social cognition
Working memory as the substrate of perspective taking; Piaget on peers; attachment security and the sibling effect; the faux pas and strange stories tests; why perspective taking varies by social target; the Virginia maltreatment study and what a reciprocal best friend changed.
12 questionsChapter 7 — Self and Moral Development
LO 7.1 — Self-concept
Self-concept as a cognitive construction; when children can hold opposing characteristics; the Shavelson structure and Harter’s domains; why physical appearance correlates so strongly with global self-esteem; social comparison and the self-enhancing bias; Harter’s additive reading of James and Cooley; the U-shaped trajectory whose outcomes did not recover; self-esteem versus self-efficacy.
17 questionsLO 7.2 — The moral self
What morality is and why it is not the same as religiosity; Hartshorne and May and how their conclusion was revised; Freud’s identification account and the evidence against it; Piaget’s premoral, heteronomous and autonomous periods and immanent justice; Kohlberg’s six stages, why Stage 6 is theoretical, and the two criticisms of the cross-cultural evidence; why peer discussion advances moral reasoning more than adult discussion.
18 questionsChapter 8 — Sex, Gender, and Peer Relationships
LO 8.1 — The evolving fields of sex and gender
Sex versus gender; essentialism, dimorphism and the gender binary perspective; the testosterone and X-chromosome findings that complicate separating the two; the DSM-5-TR and ICD-11 criteria and why diagnoses refer to distress rather than incongruence; the intervention sequence and the cautions raised about it; the community study of unnoticed distress.
20 questionsLO 8.2 — Sex determination and differentiation
SRY and why female differentiation is not a passive default; Mullerian and Wolffian ducts; androgen surges and mini-puberty; the Chicago Consensus and contested DSD terminology; CAH and newborn screening; X-linked recessive disorders; the Haier IQ finding; mosaicism and what happens when brain size is matched.
29 questionsLO 8.3 — Gender identity development
Gender schemas; label, stability and constancy and the analogy to number conservation; self-socialization; the TransYouth Project design and findings; persistence after puberty and the five-year re-transition data; the two-to-three-fold risk of psychological difficulty and the finding that it persisted even with parental support.
31 questionsLO 8.4 — Peer relationships
The Class Play nominations that outpredicted every adult measure; social competence versus social skills and why skills training alone works only modestly; cliques, crowds and degrouping; Moreno’s forces; social preference and social impact; Coie’s five sociometric categories; sociometric versus perceived popularity; how popular children enter a group.
36 questionsChapter 9 — Physical, Cognitive, and Identity Development in Adolescence
LO 9.1 — Physical development
The kisspeptin cascade; primary versus secondary sexual characteristics; why menarche and spermarche do not mark fertility; genetic and environmental influences on timing, including the SES finding that survived controlling for overweight and the attachment result that buffered it; adolescent pruning in the prefrontal cortex; the imbalance model and Ernst’s triadic extension; the 11-country sensation-seeking trajectories; HPA changes.
20 questionsLO 9.2 — Behavioral and emotional changes
Delayed phase preference and why weekend catch-up backfires; the fear-conditioning study where only adolescents failed to extinguish; the rise in adolescent depression in U.S. and worldwide data; why the early-maturation effect cannot be hormonal; rumination and co-rumination; adrenarche and the progression of sexual exploration; sexual debut timing; and the evidence on sexual orientation, including why the fraternal birth order effect is not a rearing effect.
33 questionsLO 9.3 — Cognitive development
Why algebra marks the boundary of concrete operational thought; the candy canister problem; how many adolescents actually reason formally; the control of variables strategy and combinatorial logic in the pendulum problem; why emotional commitment derails scientific reasoning; constructing ideals and the critical attitude that follows; Elkind’s imaginary audience, personal fable and invincibility fable; and Lapsley’s challenge.
18 questionsLO 9.4 — Identity development
Marcia’s four statuses worked through a single case; why moratorium is the essence of the adolescent mind; Crocetti’s breadth versus depth and searching moratorium; troubled versus carefree diffusion; what the meta-analysis of 124 studies found; why no Japanese teen in one study was foreclosed; the sexual identity milestone sequence; microaggressions versus macroaggressions; Phinney’s twofold ERI achievement; and Herman’s study of multiracial identity choice.
37 questionsChapter 10 — The Social World of Adolescence
LO 10.1 — Autonomy and peer influence
The second individuation; the study where emotional autonomy from parents and susceptibility to peers rose together between 5th and 8th grade; how peer influence differs from peer pressure; what the meta-analysis of 71 longitudinal studies found, including that the effect runs in both directions; and the cross-cultural study where the preference for non-conformists appeared only in Western adults.
7 questionsLO 10.2 — The structure of the peer network
Close friends, cliques and crowds; the crowd structure found across nine high schools and the under-5% figure for high-achieving crowds; the ACE study suggesting risk clusters by crowd; the Danish and Singaporean structures and why “nerd” carries a different valence in Singapore; peer selection and deviancy training; social identity complexity.
8 questionsLO 10.3 — Social media and peer interaction
The 2022 Pew figures; the 70% rise in youth anxiety and depression and the measurement qualifications attached to it; why many researchers think total screen time is the wrong variable; the UK study’s sex-and-timing offset and U-shaped curve; the habitual-checking study and its caveat; and the finding that online victimization mediated the screen time–suicidality link.
11 questionsLO 10.4 — The role of parents
The decline in endorsement of parental legitimacy; the U.S.–China divergence in obligation to parents; the moral, social-conventional, personal and prudential domains and why multifaceted issues generate the most conflict; Kerr and Stattin’s finding that knowledge rather than monitoring predicts outcomes; behavioral control versus harshness; acceptance versus democracy; and the 12-culture study concluding there is no single pathway.
16 questionsLO 10.5 — Adolescents in school
The stage-environment mismatch; the three dimensions of school climate; authoritative school climate theory; why criticism undercuts high expectations; the 35% dropout gap between high-expectation schools with and without student support; what explains the U.S.–China motivation gap and what it costs; and why peers shape engagement more than achievement.
10 questionsLO 10.6 — Leisure and work
How leisure time compares with other daily activities; the benefits of extracurricular participation and the mechanisms proposed; why sport and non-sport activities diverge on substance use and grade failure; how teen employment changed between 1940 and today; what hours of work predict; and the racial moderation in the NCES analysis of high-intensity work.
7 questionsLO 10.7 — Risk taking in adolescence
The maturity gap; broad versus narrow socialization; Arnett’s probability argument and its twist that base rates really are low; the finding that adolescents who take risks generally know it; gist-based adult assessment and the hair-on-fire reaction time study; the gaming experiment where mere peer presence did nothing; developmental speed and life history theory; why the high point of risk taking may come after high school; and the curvilinear control–delinquency relationship.
19 questionsChapter 11 — Physical and Cognitive Development in Young Adulthood
LO 11.1 — Adulthood as an emerging process
Adulthood as a social construction; Arnett’s “yes and no” finding and the two criteria young people rank above financial independence; what makes emerging adulthood economically possible; Erikson’s psychosocial moratorium and the !Kung parallel; the substance use crossover effect and the age pattern of suicide among Black males; the family obligation finding that extended to all groups; and the competing evaluations of the stage itself.
15 questionsLO 11.2 — Physical development
How adults and adolescents differ in the circuits they recruit for inhibitory control, and the study where only the early-30s group performed at top levels; when biological systems peak and why not together; why different athletic skills top out at different ages; the heavy drinking figures; how reasons for drinking shift between 20 and 30; and the cohort trend that reverses in the 30s and 40s.
10 questionsLO 11.3 — Cognitive development
The fifth-stage debate; Schaie’s sequence from acquisition through legacy-leaving; Sinnott’s relativistic thought and the Euclidean example; Chandler’s dissent; Perry’s nine positions in detail, including why contextual relativism is a watershed for faith and what Position 9 actually means; Kitchener’s reflective judgment; the study where reasoning about emotionally involving events lagged behind a distant war; “the person who” fallacy and the vividness effect; and thinking with a theory versus about it.
33 questionsChapter 12 — Socioemotional and Vocational Development in Young Adulthood
LO 12.1 — Love and adult attachment
What the Adult Attachment Interview actually measures; all four classifications plus earned secure; the skin conductance and cortisol findings showing dismissing strategies do not suppress physiology; why the 40-study analysis concluded attachment is dimensional, and what unresolved trauma coding leaves out; the attachment transfer sequence; why avoidant does not equal dismissing; Bartholomew’s four categories; why helpers should avoid typecasting; why complementary pairings predominate among insecure couples; the avoidant-men-but-not-women conflict finding; attachment accounts of coercive control and IPV; and the casual sex literature.
43 questionsLO 12.2 — Work and career development
Holland’s modal personal orientation and RIASEC coding of people and environments; job crafting; Super’s vocational self-concept, stage sequence and mini-cycles; the suggestion both theories make about jobs acceptable in every other respect; McAuliffe’s central counseling question; how much of the SES enrollment gap academic preparation explains; what produces validation; the forgotten half and the working poor; NEET status; the seven-country decent work study; Erikson on industry; mastery orientation and mindsets; stereotype threat; and the split timing of generativity desire and accomplishment.
35 questionsChapter 13 — Middle Adulthood: Cognitive, Personality, and Social Development
LO 13.1 — Established adulthood
Established adulthood and the “career and care crunch” of ages 30 to 45; what happens to life satisfaction and when it recovers; the life span assumption that adaptation continues from birth to death; and Bronfenbrenner’s proximal processes.
4 questionsLO 13.2 — Life span developmental theory
Why evolution and biology are “not good friends of old age” and why old age exists primarily because of modern culture; the fall in U.S. life expectancy between 2019 and 2021; why gains and losses characterize childhood too; and the three adaptations — growth, maintenance and regulation of loss.
6 questionsLO 13.3 — Sources of stability: personality
The Big 5 and what is assumed about them; social maturity and why the trend is positive; what exactly stabilizes by age 30 — rankings, not absolute levels; the meta-analysis showing interventions shift traits within 2 to 4 weeks; the three temperament clusters; and the Dunedin cohort followed from age 3.
9 questionsLO 13.4 — Sources of change
Age-graded, history-graded and non-normative change; adolescing to senescing; why men have more difficulty hearing women than the reverse; the climacteric and andropause; why cross-sectional studies overstated intellectual decline; fluid versus crystallized intelligence and the chess comparison; Vaillant’s added stages; why large studies find little evidence for a normative midlife crisis; the social gradient and the shift from SES to SEP.
19 questionsLO 13.5 — Intimacy and generativity at midlife
The SES blind spot in relationship research; what determines the stability of same-sex relationships; Sternberg’s eight kinds of love; what actually happens to children of divorce, including when divorce is the better outcome; why the U-shaped satisfaction curve is an artifact; Gottman’s negative affect reciprocity, four horsemen and 5-to-1 ratio; what really makes the empty nest hard; the sandwich generation; why stepparents should delay discipline; role buffering and how its benefits reverse by gender and class; and redemption versus contamination in life narratives.
44 questionsChapter 14 — Living Well: Stress, Coping, and Life Satisfaction in Adulthood
LO 14.1 — Wellbeing, happiness, and cultural views of the self
The hedonic and eudaimonic traditions and the Aristotelian versus Confucian views behind them; the three factors of subjective wellbeing and which one is cognitive rather than affective; the day reconstruction method and what it was designed to get around; why childcare ranks near the bottom of daily activities; sleep quality and job pressure as the strongest predictors of daily affect; psychological richness as a third kind of good life; and the nine-country study of the ideal life.
8 questionsLO 14.2 — Life satisfaction: what is a well-lived life?
Self-determination theory’s three basic needs; Easterlin’s paradox and the Gallup satiation findings; the role of social trust in developed versus transitioning economies; the hedonic treadmill and two further explanations for why affluence disappoints; maximizers versus satisficers; deaths of despair; objective versus relative SES; the Danish Effect; the 30–40% heritability of wellbeing and neuroticism as a moderator of money’s effect; the Harvard/Grant study; giving rather than receiving support; harmony, convivial collectivism and interdependent happiness; spirituality versus religion and the six religious and spiritual struggles; and Fowler’s definition of faith.
27 questionsLO 14.3 — Health and wellbeing in midlife
Resilience and the sandwich generation; the MIDUS and MIDJA longitudinal series and what makes the design distinctive; life events versus daily hassles, diathesis-stress and kindling-behavioral sensitization; human social genomics and the assumption it overturns; the Conserved Transcriptional Response to Adversity and why its two halves are puzzling together; the transcription-factor pathway from perceived threat to changed cell function; and the MIDUS findings on loneliness versus isolation, discrimination and pain, the ITACT ratio, the cultural reversal in the anger findings, sleep loss and work striving.
10 questionsLO 14.4 — Coping with stress
Why Lazarus himself called the problem- versus emotion-focused split an oversimplification; Skinner’s argument that any way of coping can be locally adaptive; conservation of resources theory and why loss outweighs gain; post-traumatic growth and the illusion debate; cultural variation in coping, with the post-September 11 studies; psychoneuroimmunology; the resilience factors; positive and negative affectivity as independent systems and prefrontal asymmetry; MBSR and its evidence base, including the opioid-misuse trial and the escitalopram comparison; focused attention, open monitoring and compassion practice; and broaden-and-build with the lovingkindness studies.
19 questionsChapter 15 — Gains and Losses in Late Adulthood
LO 15.1 — Physical and cognitive challenges
How the leading causes of death shift with age; listening-related fatigue and the dementia link; telomeres; why the frontal lobes are most vulnerable; Salthouse’s practice-effect challenge to the longitudinal picture; Craik and Bialystok’s representations and control; why only autopsy is definitive for Alzheimer’s; why normal aging does not lead to dementia; terminal decline; the care burden and its racial and gender patterns; and autobiographical memory, recency and the reminiscence bump.
22 questionsLO 15.2 — Socioemotional challenges
The four types of social information processing and why social perception may drive the others; why laboratory studies may overestimate the problem; the seven Western age schemas; how the same memory failure is attributed differently by age; elderspeak and why it backfires; internalized self-stereotypes and the priming studies; age-group dissociation; the shrinking social convoy; why loneliness is actually most common in young adults; and the six relationship expectations.
14 questionsLO 15.3 — Successful aging
Selective optimization with compensation and the Rubinstein illustration; primary and secondary control; Schlossberg’s retirement pathways and Atchley’s stages; the positivity effect, including during the pandemic; acceptance and the one emotion that did not decline; socioemotional selectivity and what actually triggers it; why MDD rates fall while depressive symptoms rise; how wisdom is defined and its five Berlin criteria; the U.S.–Japan comparison; Erikson’s integrity and renunciation; and the Rochester finding that late developers catch up.
23 questionsLO 15.4 — Death and bereavement
What patients and families each name as a good death, and where they diverge; the assumption about dying at home the text corrects; palliative care and when it can begin; the four end-of-life options defined precisely; Kubler-Ross’s five responses and why many argue the model should be abandoned as prescriptive rather than descriptive; Freud on decathexis and what his own losses led him to write; Bowlby’s opposition to Freud; the shift from a 2-month to a 12-month diagnostic threshold; Bonanno’s finding that high initial distress predicts worse outcomes; rumination’s two distinct harms; who fares worst in the search for meaning; and the dual-process model.
23 questionsSupplementary text — Anchored (Deb Dana)
Chapters 1–3
The three principles and the evolutionary timeline; context, choice, and connection; the vagus as a bundle, the 80/20 ratio, the diaphragm divide, and the vagal brake at the sinoatrial node; the HPA axis; moving between states; self-compassion as an emergent property of ventral; outside-in versus inside-out listening.
39 questionsChapters 4–6
Co-regulation as a biological imperative; reciprocity, rupture, and repair; the social engagement system — eyes, sound frequency, prosody, vocal bursts; the four connections; neuroception as autonomic intuition, match and mismatch, and why not being in danger is not the same as being safe; the connection/protection equation and resilience as flexible movement.
48 questionsChapters 7–9
Ventral as the invincible summer and a critical mass of ventral; the three concentric circles; glimmers and the negativity bias; the SAFE story; savoring as attend, appreciate, amplify. Then stretch don’t stress, the stretch-to-stress continuum, breath and sighing, touch. Then the story each state tells, the three stories always available, and Leaps and Landings.
31 questionsChapters 10–12
The five self-transcendent experiences — awe, gratitude, compassion, elevation, stillness; the vagus as the compassion nerve; forgiveness as remembering from ventral. Then tuning in, taking in, tending to; frequency, intensity and duration; self-care versus selfishness. Then the launch plan, listening as an autonomic experience, notice–name–repair, polyvagal partners, and ubuntu.
30 questions