Sample Questions: Human Growth and Development

The following Human Growth and Development sample questions aren't used in actual CLEP exams and aren’t presented here as they will be on the test. Use them to get a sense of question format and difficulty level.

Directions

Each of the questions or incomplete statements below is followed by five suggested answers or completions. Select the one that is best in each case.

Questions

1. Charles is a businessman who made a great deal of money over the past 20 years. Throughout his life he has always been self-absorbed and competitive in his business dealings and in social settings. He is now 48 years old and has no spouse or children. Charles has decided to start a charitable foundation for the benefit of needy children. Charles is most likely in Erik Erikson’s stage of
   1. industry versus inferiority
   2. generativity versus stagnation
   3. initiative versus guilt
   4. trust versus mistrust
   5. autonomy versus shame and doubt
2. Which of the following research methods would most likely be used when examining the behavior of a group of children on the playground?
   1. Case study
   2. Archival
   3. Observational
   4. Cross-sectional
   5. Experimental
3. The prenatal defects caused by the use of thalidomide can be detected using which screening procedure?
   1. Ultrasound
   2. Amniocentesis
   3. Chorionic villus sampling
   4. Apgar test
   5. Alpha-fetoprotein test
4. A cognitive-developmental-stage theorist like Jean Piaget would expect which of the following to be true?
   1. Children perform at a higher stage level when novel tasks and materials are used.
   2. Children often skip one stage of development when their IQs fall in the gifted range.
   3. Children in different cultures go through the same stages in the same order.
   4. Children move from one stage to the next stage more quickly in response to intense training.
   5. Children move through the stages more quickly when they are rewarded for successful problem solving.
5. Research suggests that which of the following types of intelligence may increase throughout the life span?
   1. Fluid
   2. Performance
   3. Mathematical
   4. Crystallized
   5. Spatial
6. Fifteen-year-old Tabatha sees someone steal something from a convenience store. She decides to tell the clerk because she knows that it is important to uphold the laws of society in order to help maintain social order. According to Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory, Tabatha is at a level of moral reasoning known as
   1. conventional
   2. preconventional
   3. postconventional
   4. formal operational
   5. preoperational
7. Timothy is an 8-year-old who gets into a lot of fights at school, does not do well academically, frequently breaks rules and is self-centered. If Timothy’s behavior stems from a particular parenting style, his parents’ style of parenting is most likely to be
   1. authoritative
   2. permissive
   3. authoritarian
   4. neglectful
   5. autonomous
8. John tends to be hardworking, ambitious and persevering. He rates high on which of the following Big Five personality dimensions?
   1. Agreeableness
   2. Neuroticism
   3. Extraversion
   4. Openness
   5. Conscientiousness
9. A behaviorist who is studying the link between parenting style and childhood aggression would be most likely to focus on
   1. how parents punish their children’s aggressive behavior
   2. how parents in different communities interpret their children’s aggressive behavior
   3. what parents believe about their children's aggressive behavior
   4. the point at which parents seek professional advice about their children's aggressive behavior
   5. whether or not parents emotionally reject aggressive children
10. A community decides to improve its health-care system by creating hospices that provide support to families with terminally ill family members. This type of hospice program is an example of
    1. a home health aide program
    2. palliative care
    3. euthanasia
    4. an advance directive
    5. a life review

Answers

1) B   2) C   3) A   4) C   5) D   6) A   7) B   8) E   9) A   10) B