49 exam-style questions on Human development — topic CTX.2 of Contexts: Applied psychology (all four studied by SL and HL) in the IB Psychology syllabus — with answers and explanations. Samples below; the full set is free with an account.
In Ainsworth's Strange Situation, an infant who explores freely, is distressed when the caregiver leaves and is readily comforted on their return is classified as showing which attachment type?
Answer: Secure
Secure attachment is characterised by using the caregiver as a safe base, distress at separation, and easy comforting on reunion.
According to Piaget, a child who cannot yet understand that the amount of liquid stays the same when poured into a taller, thinner glass lacks which ability?
Answer: Conservation
Conservation is the understanding that quantity remains constant despite changes in appearance; it typically develops in the concrete operational stage.
Harlow's (1958) studies with infant rhesus monkeys, who preferred a soft cloth 'mother' over a wire one that provided food, challenged which explanation of attachment?
Answer: The cupboard love (learning) theory
Harlow showed contact comfort mattered more than feeding, challenging the learning ('cupboard love') idea that attachment forms simply because the caregiver is associated with food.
Bowlby's concept of a 'critical period' for attachment, later softened to a 'sensitive period', proposes that:
Answer: There is a limited window in which attachment forms best
Bowlby argued attachment develops most readily within a sensitive early window; forming a first attachment becomes much harder outside it.
Kohlberg's theory of moral development proposes that a person who obeys rules mainly to avoid punishment is reasoning at which level?
Answer: Preconventional
Preconventional morality is based on consequences to the self (avoiding punishment, gaining reward), the earliest of Kohlberg's three levels.
The idea that a child's development is shaped by nested environmental systems (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem) belongs to which theorist?
Answer: Urie Bronfenbrenner
Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory describes development as embedded in interacting environmental layers from the immediate microsystem to the broad macrosystem.
That was 6 of 49 Human development questions.
Practise all 49 freeStateAO1 · 1–9 marks
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OutlineAO1 · 1–9 marks
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All of Contexts: Applied psychology (all four studied by SL and HL) →
49 Human development questions — free with an account. Spaced repetition, streaks and full exam simulations included.
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