Feb. 10: See changes/updates in red.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Child Development
1.  What are three good reasons for learning about child development?
2.  Identify a strength and a limitation in the contributions of philosophers (e.g., Locke, Rousseau) and early scientific theorists (e.g., Darwin, Hall, Gesell, Watson, Freud) to the study of child development.
3. Explain the seven enduring themes in child development and give examples for each.
4. What are the procedures involved in the scientific method?
5. What are three important criteria for good measurement?
6. Describe three contexts for gathering data. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
7. What are correlational designs? What are the risks and benefits of using correlational designs?
8. Describe  the essential components of experimental designs (random assignment, experimental and control groups, independent variables, dependent variables).
9. What are the major advantages and disadvantages of experimental designs? What can be done to overcome the major limitation?
10. Describe the designs for studying development -- cross-sectional, longitudinal, and microgenetic
11. What are the ethical responsibilities of researchers studying children?

Chapter 2: Prenatal Development, Birth, and the Newborn Period
1. What are the major structural changes that occur during each of the three major periods of prenatal development: the period of the zygote, the period of the embryo, and the period of the fetus?
2. What are  the four major developmental processes that transform a zygote into an embryo and then into a fetus?
3. What is the principle of cephalocaudal development and how does it apply to prenatal development?
4. Give at least two examples of ways in which the fetus's behavior contributes to its own development.
5. What is the age of viability?
6. What evidence do we have of learning in the human fetus?
7. Explain how the effects of the environment begin before conception.
8. What are some common teratogens and how do they affect prenatal development?
9. How does exposure to varying doses of alcohol affect prenatal development? What is a safe level of alcohol consumption for pregnant women?
10.. What factors influence the likelihood that exposure to teratogens will result in birth defects or developmental delays?
11. How does the birth process affect the postnatal survival of the fetus (i.e., what kinds of birth complications can occur)?
12. What are the very long-term consequences of prenatal and perinatal stress? What factors contribute to long-term outcomes?
13. What are the different states of arousal in the newborn and how do they change with development?
14. What is the significance of different states of arousal in newborns?
15. How should parents respond to newborns' cries?
16. How do newborns respond to auditory, visual, olfactory, taste, and touch stimuli? What do their responses indicate?
17.  What are the factors contributing to the high rate of infant mortality in the United States?
18. What outcomes are associated with low birth weight?
19. What is the Apgar scale and how is it used?

Chapter 3: Biology and Behavior
1. Define genotype, phenotype, and environment.
2. What mechanisms contribute to genetic diversity among people?
3. What are regulator genes and how do they operate?
4.  Describe the parents' genetic contributions to the child's genotype.
5.  Explain how the child's genotype contributes to his or her own phenotype.
6.  How does the concept of norm of reaction apply to the understanding of the contribution of  the environment to a child's phenotype?
7. How does the child's phenotype affect his or her environment?
8. What are the basic research designs used to study heritability and what data do each generate?
9. What are shared and nonshared environmental effects?
10. What is a heritability estimate? What are the limitations of the heritability estimate?
11. What are the major structures of the brain?
12. Describe the processes of neurogenesis, myelination, synaptogenesis, and synaptic pruning? How do these processes contribute to brain development and learning in the first three years of life (including the prenatal period)?
13. How does early experience contribute to early brain development? Explain experience-expectant  and experience-dependent plasticity.
14. What factors contribute to healthy brain development?
15. What general patterns of physical maturation are represented by growth curves?
16. What factors contribute to variability in physical maturation?
17. How does undernutrition affect development? How can malnutrition be treated?