Free Developmental Psychology MCQs with Answers

• A. one-word
• B. babbling
• C. two-word
• D. phonetic

Explanation: Telegraphic speech appears in the two-word stage, when children combine a few meaningful words such as “want juice” while omitting…

• A. babbling
• B. telegraphic speech
• C. one-word
• D. semantic

Explanation: Babbling is generally treated as the earliest recognized stage of speech development, following early crying and cooing vocalizations.

• A. phonemes
• B. basic cry
• C. babbling
• D. anagrammatic

Explanation: Babbling is usually considered the final major pre-linguistic stage before meaningful speech develops.

• A. oxygen deprivation during prenatal development
• B. fetal alcohol syndrome
• C. Down's syndrome
• D. prenatal smoking

Explanation: Down syndrome commonly results from chromosomal nondisjunction, and the risk is associated particularly with maternal age at conception.

• A. trust vs. mistrust
• B. autonomy vs. doubt
• C. intimacy vs. isolation
• D. identity vs. role confusion

Explanation: Erikson's intimacy-versus-isolation stage concerns forming close relationships while maintaining a healthy sense of self.

• A. trust vs. mistrust
• B. generativity vs. isolation
• C. intimacy vs. isolation
• D. integrity vs. despair

Explanation: Choosing a life partner and deciding about children are central adult relationship and commitment concerns, fitting Erikson's…

• A. generativity
• B. intimacy
• C. isolation
• D. integrity

Explanation: Integrity is achieved when an older person accepts the life they have lived as meaningful and whole, with a sense of completion.

• A. adolescence
• B. young adulthood
• C. middle adulthood
• D. late adulthood

Explanation: Erikson places the task of achieving integrity in late adulthood, when people reflect on and evaluate their lives.

• A. larger number of schemes
• B. new kind of scheme
• C. increasing use of accommodation
• D. increasing use of assimilation

Explanation: For Piaget, each stage introduces qualitatively different ways of thinking, represented by new kinds of schemas.

• A. mental retardation
• B. lower birth weight
• C. miscarriage
• D. visual defects

Explanation: Prenatal smoking is linked with miscarriage, reduced birth weight, and later cognitive or developmental problems, whereas visual defects…

• A. emotional
• B. physical
• C. moral
• D. social

Explanation: Piaget explained how thinking develops, while Kohlberg applied a stage-based approach to the development of moral reasoning.

• A. genes or experience
• B. continuity or stages
• C. life-span stability or change
• D. maturation or genes

Explanation: Nature refers mainly to inherited genetic influences, while nurture refers to learning and environmental experience.

• A. social learning theory
• B. psychoanalytical theory
• C. evolutionary theory
• D. gender schema theory

Explanation: Gender schema theory proposes that children organize information and interpret their own behaviour through mental categories labelled…

• A. stranger anxiety
• B. egocentrism
• C. basic trust
• D. object permanence

Explanation: Erikson’s first psychosocial stage is trust versus mistrust, and dependable caregiving supports basic trust.

• A. permissive
• B. Authoritarian
• C. authoritative
• D. rejecting-neglecting

Explanation: Authoritative parents combine warmth and responsiveness with clear, reasonable limits, which tends to foster confidence and self-esteem.

• A. environmental
• B. physical
• C. biological
• D. all of these

Explanation: In the nature/nurture distinction, nature refers to biological influences such as genes, maturation, and physiology.

• A. attachment
• B. imprinting
• C. egocentrism
• D. conservation

Explanation: Attachment is the infant's emotional bond and survival-based drive to remain close to a caregiver.

• A. Sigmund Freud
• B. Anna Freud
• C. Erik Erikson
• D. Jean Piaget

Explanation: Erik Erikson proposed psychosocial development across the entire lifespan, with a distinct developmental conflict at each stage.

• A. accommodation
• B. assimilation
• C. operations
• D. function autonomy

Explanation: Accommodation occurs when existing schemata are changed or new ones are created to fit information that does not match them.

• A. a phenotype
• B. a zygote
• C. an allele
• D. a clone

Explanation: Fertilisation, the union of sperm and egg, forms a zygote, which is the first single cell of a new organism.