Child Development and Educational Psychology MCQs with Explanations

Piaget's order is sensorimotor (birth to about two), preoperational (two to seven), concrete operational (about seven to eleven) and formal operational (from about twelve). Option 1 swaps the middle two stages, the most common error, and option 4 shifts the age boundaries.

Conservation is the understanding that quantity stays constant despite a change in appearance, and it is the hallmark of the concrete operational stage. Animism attributes life to objects, egocentrism is the inability to take another's viewpoint, and centration is fixing on one feature — all preoperational characteristics.

Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development names that difference between actual and potential development. Scaffolding (option 2) is the support given inside the zone, not the zone itself — the pairing most often tested.

Scaffolding is the contingent, fading assistance that lets a child work within the ZPD until the skill is internalised. Shaping (option 1) reinforces successive approximations behaviourally and never refers to withdrawal of cognitive support.

Erikson placed the formation of a coherent ego identity, against diffuse or confused roles, at the adolescent stage. Industry versus inferiority belongs to the school years and integrity versus despair to old age, so both are familiar-name traps.

Punishment-avoidance and self-interest reasoning define the preconventional level, its first stage. Conventional reasoning appeals to approval and law and order, and postconventional reasoning to social contract and universal principles.

A response that originally appeared only to the unconditioned stimulus (food) and now appears to the previously neutral bell is the conditioned response. The bell itself, once paired, becomes the conditioned stimulus — the substitution examiners use as the trap.

Negative reinforcement strengthens a behaviour by removing an aversive stimulus; the behaviour increases. Punishment is the trap because the word 'negative' suggests something unpleasant is added, but anything that increases a behaviour is reinforcement.

The law of effect makes reward the engine of stamping-in, and the law of exercise makes repetition the engine of strength. Readiness concerns the learner's preparedness, so option 2 is the frequent but wrong answer.

Bandura's social learning theory holds that learners acquire behaviour by observing models, and that seeing a model reinforced (vicarious reinforcement) raises the likelihood of imitation. Insight is Kohler's sudden reorganisation and latent learning is Tolman's unexpressed learning, neither of which requires a model.

Gardner's framework of multiple intelligences, set out in the 1980s, treats these as distinct intellectual competences. Spearman argued for a single general factor g (option 1), Binet built the first mental-age test, and Thurstone proposed primary mental factors, which is the closest distractor.

Dysgraphia is the specific difficulty with written expression and handwriting, while dyslexia affects reading and word decoding and dyscalculia affects arithmetic. ADHD is a pattern of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity across settings, not a reading deficit.