Q&A Hero

Q: Describe the ways that the lives of expectant teenagers tend to worsen with regard to educational attainment, marital patterns, and economic circumstances after the baby is born.

Q: Describe the sleep patterns of teenagers today. Discuss sleep deprivation and sleep rebound.

Q: Describe how researchers today view adolescent development. Name and describe its three stages.

Q: The good news about American high school dropouts is that about one-third of them A) obtain rewarding, high-paying jobs. B) are happily married and satisfied with their lives. C) attend a high-quality trade school. D) return to finish their secondary education within a few years.

Q: Today, the percentage of U.S. young people completing high school by age 24 is just over _____ percent. A) 60 B) 70 C) 80 D) 90

Q: The most powerful influence on extracurricular involvement is A) peer acceptance. B) high-quality teacher instruction. C) small school size. D) effective parenting.

Q: To work well, vocational education must A) focus heavily on job-related instruction. B) carefully integrate academic and job-related instruction. C) offer paid employment as a component of the program. D) focus heavily on basic skills.

Q: Which of the following is most helpful in keeping potential dropouts in school? A) remedial instruction in small classes B) using standardized testing instead of grades to determine who graduates C) requiring extracurricular involvement D) putting students in larger classes

Q: Students placed in general education and vocational tracks A) are just as likely as those placed in college preparatory tracks to graduate high school. B) tend to have more stimulating teachers than those in college preparatory tracks. C) are three times as likely to drop out of high school as those in a college preparatory track. D) usually participate in high-quality school-to-work placement programs.

Q: Which of the following statements about dropping out of high school is true? A) Students placed in a vocational track are much more likely to graduate from high school than those placed in a college preparatory track. B) Risk factors in first grade predict dropout nearly as well as risk factors in secondary school. C) Nearly all dropouts achieve poorly and show high rates of norm-violating acts. D) The dropout rate is higher among African-American than among Hispanic teenagers.

Q: The dropout rate in the United States is higher among __________ than __________ and is particularly high among __________. A) girls; boys; lower-SES Caucasians B) boys; girls; higher-SES ethnic minorities C) boys; girls; lower-SES ethnic minorities D) girls; boys; lower-SES ethnic minorities

Q: The high school dropout rate in the United States is about _____ percent. A) 4 B) 8 C) 12 D) 16

Q: Which of the following statements about part-time work during high school is true? A) About 10 percent of U.S. high school students work part-time during the school year. B) The more hours students work, the more likely they are to drop out of school. C) Heavy commitment to part-time work is not harmful as long as the job involves low-level repetitive tasks. D) Students who work 20 or more hours a week tend to be highly committed to their studies.

Q: Which of the following high school students is most likely to show accelerated academic progress? A) Linda, who is assigned to a general education track B) Betty, who is assigned to a vocational track C) Juan, who is assigned to a college preparatory track D) Danny, who is assigned to a low track of basic courses

Q: In a study involving weather predictions, media multitaskers A) activated the hippocampus, which plays a vital role in explicit memory. B) activated subcortical areas involved in implicit memory. C) were able to apply their learning to new weather problems. D) learned more thoroughly than participants working only on the weather task.

Q: A survey of a nationally representative sample of U.S. 8- to 18-year-olds found that their most frequent type of media multitasking is A) surfing the Internet. B) listening to music. C) talking on the phone. D) watching TV.

Q: High-achieving students typically have parents who A) are very involved in elementary school but are less involved in middle and high school. B) keep tabs on their child's progress. C) are somewhat involved in elementary school but are very involved in middle and high school. D) rely on them to communicate with teachers.

Q: Adolescents whose parents engage in __________ decision making achieve better academically. A) joint B) permissive C) authoritarian D) idealistic

Q: __________ parenting is linked to higher grades in school among adolescents varying widely in SES. A) Permissive B) Authoritarian C) Uninvolved D) Authoritative

Q: Which of the following high schools is the most likely to help its students adjust to the school transition? A) North High, which emphasizes good grades over mastery B) East High, which provides homerooms for students C) West High, which assigns students to all classes, providing no decision making or choice D) South High, which has large freshmen classrooms of 40 or more students

Q: Central Middle School has a large student body. Staff can minimize the effects of school transitions by A) offering differentiated instruction for students. B) requiring students to participate in at least one extracurricular activity. C) forming smaller units within the school. D) segregating boys and girls and emphasizing competition.

Q: Which of the following statements about school transitions is true? A) Grade point averages increase and feelings of anonymity decline after each school change. B) Girls fare better than boys with both the middle- and high school transitions. C) Adolescents facing added strains at school transitions are at greatest risk for self-esteem and academic difficulties. D) For well-adjusted youths, grade point averages tend to increase with the high school transition.

Q: Which of the following statements regarding students' ratings of their elementary, middle-, and high school learning experiences is true? A) Students tend to rate their high school experiences more favorably than their elementary school experiences. B) Students report that their middle- and high school teachers care less about them and are less friendly than their elementary school teachers. C) Students tend to rate their middle-school experiences more favorably than their elementary school experiences. D) Students report that their elementary school teachers graded less fairly and stressed competition more than their middle- and high school teachers.

Q: Which of the following statements about sex differences in computer use is true? A) Boys show greater use when software programs include background music. B) Girls more often analyze data and use graphics software. C) Girls typically focus on information gathering and social networking. D) Girls acquire more specialized computer knowledge.

Q: Research on mathematical abilities in adolescence shows that A) American boys and girls reach advanced levels of high school math study in equal proportions. B) American boys are three times as likely as girls to reach advanced levels of high school math study. C) American girls are twice as likely as boys to reach advanced levels of high school math study. D) most parents believe that boys and girls are equally skilled at advanced math.

Q: Research suggests that __________ cause(s) girls to do worse than their abilities allow on difficult math problems. A) stereotype threat B) poor problem-solving skills C) a biological disadvantage D) mediocre math instruction

Q: Which of the following statements about sex differences in spatial abilities is true? A) Experience contributes to females' superior spatial performance. B) Sex differences in spatial abilities emerge as early as the first few months of life. C) One explanation is that heredity enhances left-hemispheric functioning. D) Girls spend far more time than boys in play involving manipulative activities.

Q: The gender gap favoring males in mathematical reasoning is large for A) mental rotation tasks. B) spatial visualization tasks. C) subjects like algebra and geometry. D) basic skills like multiplication and division.

Q: With regard to verbal abilities, girls have a biological advantage in earlier development of A) the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex. B) the auditory and visual areas of the brain. C) sensory brain regions. D) spatial reasoning.

Q: Differences in __________ skills are believed to be major contributions to a widening gender gap in college enrollments. A) math B) science C) computer D) literacy

Q: In making decisions, teenagers, more often than adults, A) come up with a large number of possible solutions to a problem. B) think logically and behave rationally. C) fall back on well-learned intuitive judgments. D) consider the pros and cons of each alternative.

Q: Compared with adults making decisions, teenagers A) more often carefully evaluate alternatives. B) less often fall back on intuitive judgments. C) are more effective under "cool," unemotional conditions. D) perform less well because they must inhibit emotion and impulses in favor of thinking rationally.

Q: Fifteen-year-old Mary has become critical of her parents and siblings, yet envisions a world with no injustice or discrimination. This is typical of the __________ that manifests during the development of abstract reasoning. A) idealism B) imaginary audience C) personal fable D) metacognition

Q: Jonathan views himself as reaching great heights of omnipotence and also sinking to unusual depths of despair. Which of the following cognitive distortions contribute to Jonathan's views? A) the personal fable B) learned helplessness C) the imaginary audience D) metacognition

Q: Certain that others are observing and thinking about them, teenagers develop an inflated sense of their own importance known as A) the imaginary audience. B) the personal fable. C) metacognition. D) hypothetico-deductive reasoning.

Q: The imaginary audience is most likely responsible for adolescents' A) increased argumentativeness with their parents. B) extreme self-consciousness and sensitivity to public criticism. C) greater willingness to engage in risky behavior. D) ability to solve problems with many variables.

Q: The imaginary audience is adolescents' belief that they are A) the focus of everyone else's attention and concern. B) special and unique. C) boring and ordinary. D) idealistic and overly critical.

Q: Mrs. Frishman is concerned because her teenage son has become increasingly critical of others, while maintaining a high sense of idealism for the world at large. Mrs. Frishman could A) get him involved in community service, which will serve as a positive outlet for his idealism. B) respond patiently to his remarks and point out positive features of his targets to help him see that the world is made up of blends of virtues and imperfections. C) speak to him honestly about her concerns and let him know that his critical behavior offends her. D) ignore his critical comments, as he will eventually grow out of this stage.

Q: Mr. Peabody is frustrated with his daughter's exaggerated sense of her personal uniqueness. One way he could deal with this is to A) acknowledge her unique characteristics, but also point out how he felt similarly as a teenager to encourage the development of a more balanced perspective. B) give her a "reality check" in which he points out many other people with similar characteristics. C) play along with her inflated sense of self, as it will eventually diminish on its own. D) get his wife involved, as girls tend to be more receptive to information from their mothers at this age.

Q: Adolescents develop scientific reasoning skills A) in a nonsequential fashion. B) in a step-by-step fashion on different types of tasks. C) through rote memorization. D) through direct instruction from adults.

Q: Researchers believe that sophisticated __________ is vital for scientific reasoning. A) processing capacity B) mathematical knowledge C) strategy development D) metacognitive understanding

Q: The ability to distinguish theory from evidence and use logical rules to examine their relationship A) improves steadily from childhood into adolescence. B) slowly declines as adolescents move into adulthood. C) is unrelated to years of formal schooling. D) develops in early childhood.

Q: In adolescence, the speed of thinking and processing capacity increase. As a result, A) adolescents no longer need to experiment with memory strategies. B) more information can be held at once in working memory and combined into increasingly complex, efficient representations. C) long-term memory compensates for the limitations of working memory. D) attention becomes less selective and better adapted to the demands of tasks.

Q: Which of the following individuals is the most likely to master formal operational tasks? A) Geni, an American high school student B) Gus, an adolescent in a village society C) Ghenniaa, the chief of a tribal society D) Grady, who has had no formal schooling

Q: Which of the following college students is the most likely to show improvements in propositional thought? A) Ryan, who took a history course B) Emily, who took an art course C) Cali, who took a science course D) Erica, who took a writing course

Q: When faced with a propositional reasoning problem, 17-year-old Max is likely to A) justify his answer using a fictional or egocentric response. B) need concrete objects or situations to explain his answer. C) have great difficulty reasoning from premises that contradict reality or his own beliefs. D) justify his reasoning by explaining the logical rules on which it is based.

Q: With respect to propositional thought, young children have great difficulty reasoning from premises that contradict reality or their own beliefs because they A) automatically inhibit well-learned, real-world knowledge. B) are egocentric and cannot yet understand another person's perspective. C) fail to grasp the logical necessity of propositional reasoning. D) have poorly developed problem-solving strategies.

Q: Maddy, age 7, is presented with the following statement: If rats are bigger than cats and cats are bigger than mice, then rats are bigger than mice. She will probably judge such reasoning to be A) true because she understands propositional thought. B) true if she has seen cats, rats, and mice in picture books. C) false because not all relations specified occur in real life. D) sometimes true and sometimes false depending on her educational background.

Q: Seven-year-old Adea is asked to evaluate evidence about a hypothesis. She will probably A) be able to inhibit well-learned knowledge. B) do as well as an adult if the researcher motivates her with candy. C) be able to use propositional thought. D) deal with only one or two possible variables and be unable to deal with three or more.

Q: Which of the following statements about a school-age child's ability to use hypothetico-deductive reasoning is true? A) She can sort out evidence that bears on three or more variables at once. B) She can understand that hypotheses must be confirmed by appropriate evidence. C) She can easily explain why a pattern of observations supports a hypothesis. D) She cannot reason logically in make-believe play when a simple set of premises defies real-world knowledge.

Q: Kia, age 14, uses hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Therefore, she probably A) makes predictions about variables that might affect an outcome and then deduces logical, testable inferences from that hypothesis. B) starts with what she knows, conducts observations, and revises her approach to problem solving. C) cannot yet think of alternatives when her predictions about an outcome are not confirmed. D) is strongly motivated to identify and experiment with new memory strategies, although she may not yet use new strategies effectively.

Q: According to Piaget, around age 11, young people enter the formal operational stage of development, in which they A) are strongly motivated to experiment with new memory strategies. B) require concrete things and events as objects of thought. C) cannot separate the effects of variables in problem solving. D) are able to come up with new, general logical rules through internal reflection.

Q: Adolescents who reach the formal operational stage of cognitive development A) can only operate on reality. B) cannot "operate on operations." C) no longer require concrete things and events as objects of thought. D) cannot yet come up with general logical rules through internal reflection.

Q: Adolescent drug experimentation A) should not be taken lightly because a single heavy dose can lead to permanent injury or death. B) is a normal part of adolescence and, therefore, is not a cause for concern. C) is much greater among European than U.S. adolescents. D) is rare in the Native-American population.

Q: Toby lives in the United States. Gerri lives in Europe. Based on research on adolescent drug use, which of the following can you infer? A) Gerri is more likely to use tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs than Toby. B) The rates of drug use are similar for the two teenagers. C) Toby is less likely to use tobacco and alcohol than Gerri. D) Gerri is more likely to use illegal drugs than Toby.

Q: Minimal drug experimenters are A) seriously troubled youth who express their unhappiness through antisocial acts. B) usually impulsive and disruptive in early childhood. C) usually psychologically healthy, sociable, curious young people. D) typically emotionally or socially immature in middle childhood.

Q: By the end of high school, _____ percent of U.S. young people have tried at least one highly addictive and toxic substance. A) 15 B) 25 C) 35 D) 50

Q: Which of the following substances do American adolescents experiment with most during high school? A) cigarettes B) alcohol C) marijuana D) cocaine

Q: In Canada and Western Europe, where community- and school-based clinics offer adolescents contraceptives and where universal health insurance helps pay for them, __________ than in the United States. A) teenage sexual activity is much higher B) teenage sexual activity is much lower C) pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion rates are much higher D) pregnancy, childbirth, and abortion rates are much lower

Q: Which of the following statements about most basic sex education programs is true? A) They last many sessions and teach skills for handling sexual situations. B) They last only a few sessions and promote the value of abstinence to teenagers who are not yet sexually active. C) They last only a few sessions and provide basic facts about anatomy and reproduction to teenagers who are already sexually active. D) They last many sessions and provide information about and easy access to contraceptives.

Q: Which of the following statements about intergenerational continuity in adolescent parenthood is true? A) Contrary to popular belief, adolescent parenthood does not increase the chances of teenage childbearing in the next generation. B) Intergenerational continuity in adolescent parenthood is far greater when teenage mothers remain unmarried. C) Unmarried adolescent fathers are more likely to remain in regular contact with daughters than sons. D) International continuity in adolescent parenthood affects daughters but not sons.

Q: Compared with adult mothers, adolescent mothers A) have low expectations of infants. B) more often engage in child abuse. C) perceive their babies as less difficult. D) interact more efficiently with their infants.

Q: Which of the following statements about adolescent mothers is true? A) Most experience serious birth complications. B) Most receive state-mandated child support payments from the father. C) They are less likely to divorce if they do marry. D) Very few give up their infants for adoption.

Q: Teenage pregnancies are a far greater problem today than several decades ago because A) most public schools teach abstinence only, which does little to prepare teens for safe sex. B) the stigma of teenage parenthood is much worse and many couples refuse to adopt the baby of a teenage mother. C) adolescents are far less likely to marry before childbirth, increasing the negative consequences for both mother and baby. D) most adolescents lack the knowledge and resources to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies.

Q: Studies show that most adolescents are aware of basic facts about AIDS but A) believe that AIDS happens to "other people" and that they are somehow immune to catching it. B) believe that birth control pills provide some protection from STDs. C) are better informed about other STDs. D) are poorly informed about how to protect themselves against other STDs.

Q: Which of the following statements about the spread of STDs, including AIDS, is true? A) It is at least five times as easy for a male to infect a female, as for a female to infect a male. B) It is at least five times as easy for a female to infect a male, as for a male to infect a female. C) It is just as easy for a female to infect a male, as for a male to infect a female. D) It is at least twice as easy for a male to infect a female, as for a female to infect a male.

Q: Mark is from Texas, and Daryl is from Alberta, Canada. Which of the following statements about the likelihood of each sexually active teen contracting AIDS or another STD is true? A) Mark is less likely than Daryl to contract AIDS, but more likely to contract another STD. B) Mark is more likely than Daryl to contract AIDS or another STD. C) Mark is less likely than Daryl to contract AIDS or another STD. D) Mark is more likely than Daryl to contract AIDS, but less likely to contract another STD.

Q: In the United States, 1 out of _____ sexually active teenagers contracts a sexually transmitted disease each year. A) 2 B) 5 C) 10 D) 100

Q: Which of the following statements about homosexuality is true? A) Attraction to members of the same sex is not limited to teens who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. B) Most homosexual adolescents are "gender-deviant" in dress and behavior. C) About 85 percent of adolescents who report having engaged in homosexual acts identify as homosexual. D) Researchers have yet to identify a link between heredity and homosexuality.

Q: Girls __________ are more likely to become lesbian or bisexual. A) who are later in birth order B) exposed prenatally to very high levels of androgens or estrogens C) who have a higher-than-average number of older brothers D) who are gender-deviant in dress or behavior

Q: Research indicates that __________ may predispose males to become homosexual. A) a gene or group of genes on the X chromosome B) overly strict parenting during the early years C) excessive contact with homosexual adults D) chemical pollutants found in the atmosphere

Q: Studies show that __________ makes an important contribution to homosexuality. A) heredity B) drug abuse C) alcoholism D) cross-gender behavior

Q: Which of the following three-phase sequences do many homosexual adolescents and adults move through in coming out to themselves and others? A) questioning, information seeking, and satisfaction B) feeling different, confusion, and self-acceptance C) worry, self-acceptance, and happiness D) confusion, embarrassment, and resignation

Q: Many gay men and lesbians first sensed their biologically determined sexual orientation between ages __________, when they discovered __________. A) 3 and 6; a preference for their same-sex parent B) 6 and 12; a preference for quiet activities and hobbies C) 6 and 12; their play interests were more like those of the other gender D) 12 and 16; strong attractions to members of the same sex

Q: Research shows that many adolescents do not use contraception during sexual activity because they A) fail to apply their reasoning skills to everyday situations. B) enjoy the thrill of risky behavior. C) receive inaccurate information on pregnancy and STDs. D) are unable to determine the consequences of their actions.

Q: Early sexual activity is more common among young people from A) high-SES income homes. B) economically disadvantaged homes. C) only-child families. D) large families.

Q: Nearly _____ percent of adolescents in the United States and other Western countries report having had sexual intercourse. A) 25 B) 35 C) 50 D) 65

Q: Which of the following statements about the sexual behavior of U.S. adolescents is true? A) Boys tend to have their first intercourse earlier than girls. B) Few young adolescents are sexually active. C) At the end of high school, boys report higher rates of having had sexual intercourse than girls. D) U.S. youths become sexually active later than their Canadian and European counterparts.

Q: About _____ percent of young people report getting information from parents about intercourse, pregnancy prevention, and sexually transmitted disease. A) 35 B) 50 C) 65 D) 80

Q: Compared to other cultures, North American adolescents have A) very open sexual attitudes. B) a more open attitude toward homosexuality. C) little or no information about sex. D) relatively restrictive sexual attitudes.