Question 1

During early childhood, children enter the second major stage of cognitive development that Jean Piaget called the
A) concrete operational stage.
B) formal operational stage.
C) preoperational stage.
D) sensorimotor stage.

Accepted Answer

Jean Piaget's second stage of cognitive development is the preoperational stage, which typically occurs between the ages of 2 and 7 years. This stage is characterized by the development of language and imagination, but thinking is still intuitive and egocentric.

Question 2

________ is Jean Piaget's term for the ability to use mental representations to which a child has attached meaning.
A) Symbolic function
B) Centration
C) Transduction
D) Egocentrism

Accepted Answer

Symbolic function is the term used by Jean Piaget to describe the ability of a child to use symbols, or mental representations, to which they have attached meaning. This stage allows children to engage in pretend play and understand symbols.

Question 3

Pretend play is proof of children's ability to grasp
A) the use of symbols.
B) inductive reasoning.
C) deductive reasoning.
D) the logic of cause and effect.

Accepted Answer

Pretend play involves using objects or actions to represent other objects, actions, or concepts, demonstrating children's understanding and use of symbols.

Question 4

Which of the following scenarios illustrates the use of symbolic function by a child?
A) Two days after 3-year-old Kellie stole two cookies from her mother's cookie jar, the jar fell down and broke, and Kellie held herself responsible for this.
B) On Sunday morning, 3-year-old Betsy watched her father make pancakes. On Tuesday, she made pancakes with modeling clay.
C) Four-year-old Carmen walked up to her mother and asked her to beat the chair that made her fall.
D) After seeing another person eat chocolate pudding, 4-year-old Darren screams at her mother and tells her that he wants chocolate pudding.

Accepted Answer

Betsy's action of making pancakes with modeling clay after observing her father illustrates symbolic function, as she uses one object (modeling clay) to represent another (actual pancakes), demonstrating an understanding of symbols and imaginative play.

Question 5

Which of the following is an example of pretend play?
A) During a game of hide-and-seek, 3-year-old Lindsay hides behind a car, thinking that her friend will never look for her there.
B) Three-year-old Nina takes her father's belt and makes it slither on the ground, trying to imitate the movements of a snake.
C) Four-year-old Jake narrates a story to his younger brother in a highly modulated voice.
D) Four-year-old Molly tells stories of what happened in her class, adding a few exaggerated details.

Accepted Answer

Pretend play involves using imagination to create scenarios that are not grounded in reality. In choice B, Nina is engaging in pretend play by using her father's belt as a prop to imitate a snake, showcasing her imaginative ability to transform one object into another in her play.

Question 6

Gannon and Cole, who are both 3 years old, ride their bikes around the driveway, making sounds of a moving train. They tell their parents that they are train conductors. What kind of play are they engaging in?
A) pretend play
B) guided play
C) narrative play
D) formal play

Accepted Answer

Gannon and Cole are engaging in pretend play, which involves acting out scenes and embodying different roles, in this case, train conductors, which is typical behavior for children exploring their imagination and understanding of the world around them.

Question 7

Three-year-old Sarah playfully hit her brother, Adam, on Saturday evening. When Adam woke up with a fever the next morning, Sarah concluded that she made her brother sick by hitting him. This is an example of
A) categorization.
B) transduction.
C) conservation.
D) animism.

Accepted Answer

Sarah's conclusion that her action of hitting her brother caused his illness is an example of transduction, which is a form of prelogical reasoning typical in young children where they link events that occur close together in time without understanding the true cause-and-effect relationship.

Question 8

Three-year-old Austin is playing with his toy cars. He arranges all his toy cars based on their color. Austin's ability to arrange things by color illustrates the concept of
A) categorization.
B) conservation.
C) transduction.
D) theory of mind.

Accepted Answer

Categorization is the cognitive process of organizing objects or concepts into categories based on shared characteristics. Austin's ability to arrange his toy cars by color demonstrates his use of categorization, as he is grouping the cars based on the shared characteristic of color. Conservation refers to the understanding that certain properties of objects remain the same despite changes in their form or appearance, which is not what Austin is demonstrating. Transduction is a concept more commonly related to sensory processing or genetics, not relevant in this context. Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others, also not demonstrated by simply arranging cars by color.

Question 9

________ is the tendency to attribute life to objects that are not alive.
A) Symbolism
B) Conservation
C) Centration
D) Animism

Accepted Answer

Animism is the psychological concept referring to the tendency, especially in children, to attribute life and lifelike qualities to inanimate objects.

Question 10

Renee pours a glass of water for her doll, telling her mother that her doll is thirsty. This act best illustrates the Piagetian concept of
A) conservation.
B) centration.
C) transitivity.
D) animism.

Accepted Answer

Renee attributing human characteristics (thirst) to an inanimate object (her doll) exemplifies the Piagetian concept of animism, which is common in the preoperational stage of cognitive development.

Question 11

Four-year-old Hatim thinks that it is cloudy because the sun is angry and is hiding behind the clouds. This belief of Hatim is an example of
A) egocentrism.
B) centration.
C) pretend play.
D) animism.

Accepted Answer

Hatim's belief that the sun can have emotions and is hiding because it is angry is an example of animism. Animism is the tendency of children to ascribe life and intention to inanimate objects, a common phase in cognitive development according to Jean Piaget's theory.

Question 12

Five-year-old Rebecca plays a game on her iPad in which she needs to tap on all red-colored objects that appear on the screen and ignore objects of other colors. At the end of every game, an animated character of a girl appears to congratulate Rebecca. When asked who the character is, Rebecca says that it is a girl who lives inside the screen and watches her games. This illustrates
A) egocentrism.
B) transduction.
C) pretend play.
D) animism.

Accepted Answer

Rebecca's belief that the animated character is a girl who lives inside the screen and watches her games is an example of animism, which is the attribution of life and consciousness to inanimate objects, a common thought process in early childhood development.

Question 13

Jacob, a Piagetian researcher, claims that all children during early childhood exhibit animism. Which of the following examples weakens his claim?
A) Three-year-old Martin believes that his brown teddy talks to him at night and eats his candies.
B) Four-year-old Stella does not believe her brother when he says that walls can listen to them talking.
C) Eight-year-old Hunan successfully distinguishes living things from nonliving things in his class test.
D) Four-year-old Jenny refers to the potted plants in her house as "they" and sings to them every morning.

Accepted Answer

B) Four-year-old Stella does not believe her brother when he says that walls can listen to them talking. This example weakens Jacob's claim because it shows a child in early childhood who does not exhibit animism, contradicting the assertion that all children in this stage do.

Question 14

Ms. Wang, a kindergarten teacher, gives her students a math problem to solve. She asks them to decide who has more crayons: Jamie who has five crayons or Juan who has seven. Which of the following abilities is Ms. Wang specifically testing through this question?
A) ordinality
B) categorization
C) centration
D) animism

Accepted Answer

Ordinality involves understanding the order of numbers, such as knowing that seven is more than five, which is what Ms. Wang is testing by asking the students to compare the number of crayons Jamie and Juan have.

Question 15

Caroline has given her kindergarten class a worksheet with small addition sums. Which of the following cognitive abilities is she specifically testing through this worksheet?
A) number patterns
B) number transformation
C) categorization
D) centration

Accepted Answer

Number transformation involves understanding and performing operations like addition, which is what the worksheet is testing.

Question 16

While reading aloud one day, Callie pointed to a word in the book and asked her father, "What does this word mean?" Callie, however, did not realize that she needed to turn the book so that her father could see the word. This is an example of
A) seriation.
B) transductive reasoning.
C) egocentrism.
D) animism.

Accepted Answer

This scenario is an example of egocentrism, a concept from Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Egocentrism refers to the inability of a child to see a situation from another person's point of view. In this case, Callie does not understand that her father cannot see the word from her perspective without the book being turned towards him.

Question 17

In the context of Jean Piaget's cognitive theory, which of the following best describes the term egocentrism?
A) the inability to consider another person's point of view
B) the ability to empathize with another person's pain
C) the ability to plan ahead and set goals
D) the inability to develop the concept of self and use "I" in sentences

Accepted Answer

Egocentrism, according to Jean Piaget, refers to the developmental stage where a child is unable to see a situation from another person's point of view. This is characteristic of the preoperational stage of cognitive development.

Question 18

Jean Piaget's term for awareness that two objects that are equal according to a certain measure remain equal in the face of perceptual alteration so long as nothing has been added to or taken away from either object is known as
A) decentration.
B) conservation.
C) irreversibility.
D) ordinality.

Accepted Answer

Conservation is the term used by Jean Piaget to describe the understanding that objects retain their properties of mass, volume, and number even when their shapes or appearances change, provided nothing is added or taken away. This concept is a key part of Piaget's theory of cognitive development in children.

Question 19

Four-year-old Hugo is shown two rows of six candles each. The candles in one row are spaced farther than the candles in the other row. When Hugo is asked if there are an equal number of candles in both rows, he replies that the row with more distance between the candles has more candles. In the context of Jean Piaget's cognitive theory, this illustrates Hugo's inability to grasp
A) theory of mind.
B) object permanence.
C) conservation.
D) transduction.

Accepted Answer

This illustrates Hugo's inability to grasp conservation, which is the understanding that quantity does not change despite changes in the shape or arrangement of objects. Piaget found that children typically develop this understanding during the concrete operational stage, which starts around age 7.

Question 20

Four-year-old Nina is shown two balls of play dough of the same weight. One ball is then mashed into a flat shape. When Nina is asked if the two objects have the same weight, she replies that the flat-shaped dough is heavier. In the context of Jean Piaget's cognitive theory, this illustrates Nina's inability to grasp
A) theory of mind.
B) object permanence.
C) conservation.
D) transduction.

Accepted Answer

Nina's response illustrates her inability to grasp the concept of conservation, which is the understanding that certain properties of objects, such as their mass, volume, or number, remain the same despite changes in the forms or arrangements of the objects. This concept is typically developed during the concrete operational stage of Piaget's theory of cognitive development, which children enter around the age of 7 or 8.

Quiz 9: Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

During early childhood, children enter the second major stage of cognitive development that Jean Piaget called the

________ is Jean Piaget's term for the ability to use mental representations to which a child has attached meaning.

Pretend play is proof of children's ability to grasp

Which of the following scenarios illustrates the use of symbolic function by a child?

Which of the following is an example of pretend play?

Gannon and Cole, who are both 3 years old, ride their bikes around the driveway, making sounds of a moving train. They tell their parents that they are train conductors. What kind of play are they engaging in?

Three-year-old Sarah playfully hit her brother, Adam, on Saturday evening. When Adam woke up with a fever the next morning, Sarah concluded that she made her brother sick by hitting him. This is an example of

Three-year-old Austin is playing with his toy cars. He arranges all his toy cars based on their color. Austin's ability to arrange things by color illustrates the concept of

________ is the tendency to attribute life to objects that are not alive.

Renee pours a glass of water for her doll, telling her mother that her doll is thirsty. This act best illustrates the Piagetian concept of

Four-year-old Hatim thinks that it is cloudy because the sun is angry and is hiding behind the clouds. This belief of Hatim is an example of

Jacob, a Piagetian researcher, claims that all children during early childhood exhibit animism. Which of the following examples weakens his claim?

Ms. Wang, a kindergarten teacher, gives her students a math problem to solve. She asks them to decide who has more crayons: Jamie who has five crayons or Juan who has seven. Which of the following abilities is Ms. Wang specifically testing through this question?

Caroline has given her kindergarten class a worksheet with small addition sums. Which of the following cognitive abilities is she specifically testing through this worksheet?

While reading aloud one day, Callie pointed to a word in the book and asked her father, "What does this word mean?" Callie, however, did not realize that she needed to turn the book so that her father could see the word. This is an example of

In the context of Jean Piaget's cognitive theory, which of the following best describes the term egocentrism?

Jean Piaget's term for awareness that two objects that are equal according to a certain measure remain equal in the face of perceptual alteration so long as nothing has been added to or taken away from either object is known as