MCQ - Cognitive Development

MCQ-  Cognitive Development 

Multiple Choice: Check your understanding of Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories of cognitive development by selecting the best choice for each question.

1. Before learning about Piaget’s theory, you understood the terms assimilation and accommodation as they are used in conversation. After learning about Piaget’s theory, you understood these terms as processes of intellectual development. This new understanding is most specifically known as

a. organization.

b. assimilation.

c. accommodation.

d. epistemology.

2. A most basic assumption of Piaget’s theory is that children progress through developmental stages

a. in an invariant sequence.

b. at specific ages.

c. dependent on their sociocultural experiences.

d. as they acquire increasingly complex understandings of imitation.

3. Developmental research has confirmed the basic sequence of development that Piaget proposed for the sensorimotor period, but some of the milestones are reached earlier than he proposed, including all of the following except

a. A-not-B errors.

b. deferred imitation.

c. primary circular reactions.

d. object permanence.

4. Which of the following competencies is acquired in Piaget’s preoperational stage?

a. Symbolic function

b. Decentration

c. Reversibility

d. Transitivity

5. Piaget noted that children’s cognitive competencies were often uneven, with children being unable to solve certain problems even though they could solve similar problems requiring the same mental operations. He referred to this phenomenon as

a. genetic epistemology.

b. decentration of operations.

c. mental seriation.

d. horizontal décalage.

6. Tamara is beginning to use hypothetico-deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning in her thinking. She is becoming quite idealistic in her thinking about world politics and even her parents’ behavior. In addition, she imagines that other people are as interested in her thoughts and behaviors as she is. Tamara is most likely in the _______ stage of

development.

a. sensorimotor

b. preoperational

c. concrete-operational

d. formal-operational

7. Developmental psychologists criticize Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory for all of the following reasons except

a. the assumption that development occurs in stages.

b. failing to adequately describe different stages of cognitive development.

c. failing to specify how children progress from one stage of development to the next.

d. underestimating social and cultural influences on cognitive development.

8. Vygotsky proposed that we should evaluate development from the perspective of four interrelated levels in interaction with children’s environments. These four levels include all of the following except

a. microgenetic.

b. ontogenetic.

c. phylogenetic.

d. sociogenetic.

9. Text messaging to communicate using cell phones is so common in today’s generation of teenagers and young adults that it has become what Vygotsky would call a

a. zone of proximal development.

b. tool of intellectual adaptation.

c. scaffold.

d. guide of participation.

10. _______ argued that children’s self-talk was a form of egocentric speech. _______ argued that children’s self-talk was a cognitive self-guidance system that regulates problem-solving activities.

a. Piaget; Vygotsky

b. Piaget; Piaget

c. Vygotsky; Piaget

d. Vygotsky; Vygotsky

answer  key

1. a

2. a

3. c

4. a

5. d

6. d

7. b

8. d

9. b

10. a