Development Across the Lifespan Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

What is the name for the role a trusted caregiver plays when their reliable presence gives a young child the confidence to move away and explore the world, returning to them now and then for reassurance?

Question 2

What is the name for the capacity of some children and adults to adapt well and reach good outcomes despite serious adversity such as poverty, maltreatment, war or loss, often supported by at least one stable, caring relationship?

Question 3

What is the name, also from Elkind, for the adolescent's feeling of being constantly watched and judged by others, as though on a stage, so that a small blemish or wardrobe mishap feels like a catastrophe witnessed by everyone?

Question 4

What is the name for the biologically based, early-appearing individual differences in emotional reactivity, activity level, attention and self-regulation, on which later personality is thought to be built?

Question 5

What is the name, from Paul and Margret Baltes, for the strategy of successful ageing in which a person narrows their goals to the few that matter most, puts their best resources into those, and finds workarounds for lost capacities?

Question 6

What is the name, in Erikson's theory, for the psychosocial conflict of the preschool years, about ages three to six, in which a child who is encouraged to plan, start projects and take on new tasks gains a sense of purpose, while constant criticism breeds a fear of asserting themselves?

Question 7

What is the name for the near-total inability of older children and adults to recall specific events from roughly the first three to four years of life, despite those years being full of learning?

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About Development Across the Lifespan

This quiz is about how a person changes from conception to old age: the ways development is studied, prenatal growth and the newborn, the infant's first bonds, the unfolding of thinking and language, the growth of morality and the self, the classic stages of psychosocial life, adolescence and the adult years, and the psychology of ageing. Ninety questions in six packs, each describing a concept, a stage, a theory, a research method or an effect and asking you to name it from four choices of the same kind, then explaining it. It is a knowledge quiz.

The first pack covers how development is studied and the earliest life: longitudinal, cross-sectional and cohort issues, gene-environment correlation and the twin study, teratogens and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, the embryonic period, the rooting and Moro reflexes, preferential looking, kangaroo mother care, the still-face paradigm, sensitive periods and infantile amnesia.

The second pack covers attachment and early social life: the secure base, separation and stranger anxiety, the Strange Situation, the secure, resistant, avoidant and disorganised patterns, the internal working model, monotropy, contact comfort, behavioural inhibition, temperament and social referencing.

The third pack covers Piaget and cognitive development: the four stages, object permanence, egocentrism, conservation and centration, assimilation and accommodation, and Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, scaffolding and private speech, along with theory of mind and the false-belief task.

The fourth pack covers language, morality and the self: babbling, telegraphic speech, fast mapping, child-directed speech and the vocabulary spurt; Kohlberg's three levels of moral reasoning and Piaget's heteronomous morality; self-conscious emotions, the mirror self-recognition test, gender identity, gender constancy, gender schema theory and delay of gratification.

The fifth pack covers Erikson's eight psychosocial conflicts from trust versus mistrust to integrity versus despair, together with Marcia's identity moratorium, Elkind's personal fable and imaginary audience, emerging adulthood, the dual systems model of adolescent risk, socioemotional selectivity theory and the positivity effect.

The sixth pack covers theories, parenting and ageing: Bronfenbrenner's micro-, meso-, exo-, macro- and chronosystems, Baumrind's authoritative, authoritarian, permissive and uninvolved styles, goodness of fit, resilience, cognitive reserve, terminal decline, selective optimization with compensation and disengagement theory.

The wrong answers are always other concepts, stages, theories or methods of the same kind. About thirty-six of the ninety questions carry a photograph of a neutral object, dice, poker chips, a stopwatch, a model brain or a microscope, chosen because every option is the same sort of thing and the picture cannot point to any of them. Facts have been checked against standard developmental-psychology texts.