Test: Human Development- 2 - Humanities/Arts MCQ

All of the research findings indicated above challenge, and thus do not support, the belief that every middle-aged person experiences a mid-life crisis.

By five years of age, children can accurately predict the gender of a person based on stereotypical attributes associated with men and women and with particular jobs.

Research has shown that, on the average, people in their 60’s perform at roughly the same level as people in their 20’s on various tests of cognitive performance.

Gender identity disorder is the term used to refer to the experience of a person whose biological sex does not match their gender identity. Answers A, B and C do not refer to this experience and represent other potential complications in physical, social and mental development.

As in all other parts of the lifespan, relationships are important to the older person’s adjustment (Johnson, 2001). For some people, the marital relationship may become more rewarding during old age. Some research has found that satisfaction with marriage tends to be rated higher in retired people than in middle-aged adults (Orbuch, House & Webster, 1996; Rollins & Feldman, 1970). This could be down to a whole host of reasons, not least the fact that partners now provide each other with a degree of companionship and support that may not always have been so apparent or so appreciated in busier earlier years. Other social roles – such as grand-parenting or great-grandparenting – are also enjoyed by many older people, and sibling relationships often become particularly important (Cicirelli, 1989) – by this stage, our most long-lasting relationships are usually those with our brothers and sisters. And the many positive benefits of friendships remain at least as important in the later years as they are earlier in the lifespan (Antonucci, 1985). Overall, when asked to identify the most important considerations affecting quality of life, older people consistently place personal relationships and social networks high on their lists (Ferris & Branston, 1994).

The rooting reflex refers to the tendency to orient the head and mouth towards an object touching the face. The sucking reflex refers to the tendency to suck on objects placed in the mouth. Both of these reflexes ensure that the infant will respond to the mother’s breast. The Moro reflex refers to the infant’s reaction to a sudden loss of support to the neck and head in which the baby thrusts out her arms and legs as if striving for support.

Through most of childhood, people grow at a fairly steady pace – about 5–10 cm and 2–3 kg per annum. But with the beginnings of adolescence, most individuals undergo another radical change, often called a growth spurt. In girls, this typically occurs at around age 10 to 13; in boys, it occurs between 12 and 15. Growth is quite rapid compared to earlier in the lifespan – a girl may add around 9 kg in a year, and boys around 11 kg (Tanner, 1962). During puberty the developing body commences the changes that allow it in turn to contribute to the reproductive process.

Jean Piaget (1896–1980), a Swiss psychologist, developed a model of cognitive development which holds that children’s thinking progresses through a series of orderly stages. According to Piaget, each stage reflects qualitative differences in the way the child understands and acts upon the world relative to its status at another developmental phase.
In the first, sensorimotor stage (which he described as extending from birth to approximately 2 years), Piaget regarded the child as acting to learn about itself and its relations to the environment. A key emphasis here is on the child’s actions. Piaget believed that children learn by doing, and that they advance their understanding by testing what they know to its limits (much as scientists do).

The last stage of Piaget’s theory is the formal operations stage which includes the ability to reason about abstract concepts and principles and evaluate alternative outcomes. Concrete operations occur in middle childhood, sensorimotor occurs in the first 2 years and preoperational occurs between 2 and 6 years; none of these stages involves the ability to engage in abstract reasoning. Logic and reasoning is not a term used to refer to Piaget’s stages.

In the course of their seemingly playful activity, infants are learning a great deal. But at any one stage, there are limits to what they know. For example, in the first few months of life, although babies get better at manipulating objects, the stability of objects in their lives is generally beyond their control – things (such as toys) come and go. Piaget maintained that very young infants have no conception of the durability of objects: according to him, at this age, while something is within reach or sight, it exists, but ‘out of sight is out of mind’. The notion that an object can continue to exist even when we cannot see it is termed object permanence.
Piaget believed that this is a relatively late achievement of the sensorimotor period (around 9 months). Other developments during this sensorimotor stage of development include greater experimentation with the things the infant can do with objects, learning to use objects as tools, and systematically copying others’ behaviour to achieve new skills.

Peers are often regarded as a potentially harmful influence, leading impressionable teenagers into dangerous experimentation (e.g. with drugs and sex), dereliction of responsibilities (e.g. schoolwork) and hostility to adults and adult society. Peer values are often assumed to be the antithesis of parental values. But is this actually the case? Friends’ behaviour does tend to be correlated with adolescents’ choices and actions in many areas (Durkin, 1995). But, as you should already know from your readings on methodology, correlation does not equal causation.
In fact, we choose our friends – and adolescents tend to choose friends who have similar interests. If you are a smoker, you probably will not choose to hang out most of the time with the sports crowd. More generally, adolescents themselves report that, although they are subjected to peer pressures sometimes, they do not generally experience this as a major influence on their behaviour or as something that they find particularly difficult to handle (du Bois-Reymond & Revesloot, 1994; Lightfoot, 1992). Furthermore, perceived peer influence tends to vary across different domains of life. It is quite strong with regard to appearance (e.g. hairstyle, clothing) and socializing (e.g. dating, finding out where it is cool to be seen), but peer pressure is less influential when it comes to moral values, anti-social behaviour and career decisions (Brown, 1999).

By one year of age, children with normal development can utter a few words.

Early adulthood is, for most people, the time of peak physical capacity. The body reaches full height by the late teens, and physical strength increases into the late twenties and early thirties (Whitbourne, 2001). Manual agility and coordination, and sensory capacities such as vision and hearing, are also at their peak. But change is imminent, even in these basic capacities. Some decline in the perception of high-pitched tones is found by the late twenties (Whitbourne, 2001), and manual dexterity begins to reduce in the mid-thirties. In general, people in early adulthood feel robust and energetic, although it is not unusual to see fluctuations around deadlines and exam periods! On the other hand, people in this age group are also legally able to use damaging substances and can obtain access to illegal stimulants or narcotics. They also have increasing responsibility for organizing their own eating habits and exercise regimes. Not surprisingly, the health status and prospects of young adults are dependent more than ever before on their own behavioural choices.

When an infant acts relatively indifferent to the mother’s presence and does not respond to her leave or return, this is identified as an avoidant style. The resistant style demonstrates great distress at mother’s absence and great difficulty being consoled upon mother’s return. Secure attachment may show some distress at mother’s absence, but happy upon her return. Preoperational is not a term used to describe attachment styles.

Schaie (1995, 2000) focused on five primary abilities:

• numeric facility
• verbal recall
• verbal ability
• inductive reasoning
• spatial orientation.