Midterm Exam — Study Guide

Coverage — what the midterm covers

The midterm is cumulative over Weeks 1 to 7, which is Objectives 1 to 5 as taught in those weeks. It opens in the Week 8 module and closes at the due time your instructor sets. There is no time limit, and you get one attempt. The questions appear one at a time, and you cannot go back once you move on.

Format: 25 questions, and every question counts the same. Twenty ask you to pick one option, three ask you to judge a statement as true or false, and two ask you to pick every option that fits. Any record, age, or table a question uses is written out in the question, and no question needs a chart or a picture. The midterm is closed to AI.

What is in scope, with the number of midterm questions on each course objective:

Midterm coverage by course objective: the weeks its questions come from, its main skills, and its number of questions out of 25

Course objective	Weeks its questions come from	Main skills	Questions
Domains, core questions, and theories	1, 2, 3, and 6	The three domains; the periods; nature and nurture; continuity; the ecological systems; what each theory explains and leaves out; theories used as lenses on a record	9
Research, observation, and ethics	3 and 5	Correlational against experimental; research designs; the five observation tools; description kept apart from interpretation; consent and assent	3
Prenatal development and birth	4	The three prenatal periods; genotype and phenotype; teratogens and timing; labor; the Apgar score; the two WHO birth definitions	2
Infant physical, cognitive, and language development	5 and 6	The infant brain; reflexes; gross and fine motor; the WHO windows; safe sleep; Piaget's schemes and substages; object permanence; language	6
Infant social-emotional development	7	Early emotions; temperament and goodness of fit; attachment research; temperament against attachment; Erikson's first two stages; the emerging self	5

The domains, core questions, and theories carry the most questions, 9, because Weeks 1 and 2 teach them and Weeks 3 and 6 use them again as lenses. By week, Weeks 5 and 7 hold 5 of the 25 each, Week 3 holds 4, Weeks 1, 2, and 6 hold 3 each, and Week 4 holds 2. So put extra review time on Week 5's body and brain, on Week 7's feelings and first relationships, and on Week 3's methods. By difficulty, 9 questions are easy, 12 are medium, and 4 are hard. Week 8's new material on play is not tested on the midterm, and it still helps you practice reading a time sample.

Topic-by-topic review

Each week below follows the order Week 8 used for its review. It names the distinction the week asks you to keep, then the key idea in plain words, the course's own definitions, the course example, and the predictable mistakes with their cures. The deeper review for every topic is that week's chapter, lecture, slide deck, and readings.

Week 1 — What child development is

• The distinctions: the three domains working together, and nature and nurture as interaction.
• Key idea: children change in body, mind, and relationships at once, and genes and experience always shape that change together.
• Child development is the study of how and why children change across the years from conception through adolescence, in the physical, cognitive, and social-emotional domains, which affect one another. The course is not a lifespan course, not a clinical or diagnostic course, and not a parenting-advice course.
• The domains: the physical domain covers the body, the brain, motor skills, and health. The cognitive domain covers thinking, memory, language, and learning. The social-emotional domain covers feelings, relationships, and identity.
• The periods are conventions with fuzzy edges: prenatal (conception to birth), infancy and toddlerhood (birth to about 2), early childhood (about 2 to 6), middle childhood (about 6 to 11), and adolescence (about 11 to 18).
• The core questions: nature and nurture asks how genes and experience shape development, and the course treats them as always working together. Continuity and discontinuity asks whether a change is gradual, a little more at a time, or comes in distinct steps. Universal and context-specific change asks which changes happen in nearly every child and which depend on family, culture, and place. Normative influences are ones most people in a group experience, such as starting school; non-normative influences are unusual events in one life, such as a serious illness.
• Ecological systems, from Bronfenbrenner (1979), The Ecology of Human Development: the microsystem is a setting the child takes part in directly, such as the family or a classroom. The mesosystem is the links between those settings. The exosystem is a setting the child does not enter that still affects the child, such as a parent's workplace. The macrosystem is the culture, laws, and values around all of it. His later work added the chronosystem, change over time.
• Course example: the running case has 8 illustrative records, R1 to R8, from birth to 15. Read by domain, it gives physical 4, cognitive 5, and social-emotional 4 readings, so 4 + 5 + 4 = 13 readings from 8 records. R3, at 14 months, shows all three at once: walking alone, saying "ball", "up", and "more", and crying when the parent leaves.
• Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) nature and nurture read as competing forces. Cure: they always work together. (2) one domain read as developing apart from the others. Cure: a change in one moves the others. (3) development read as ending at birth or at school entry. Cure: the course runs from conception through adolescence. (4) an age period read as a fixed boundary. Cure: the edges are fuzzy, and no child changes overnight on a birthday.

Week 2 — Theories of development

• The distinction: what each theory explains well and what it leaves out.
• Key idea: a developmental theory organizes many observations into an explanation that makes predictions research can test. The course uses several because each one explains some parts of development better than others.
• Psychoanalytic roots and Erikson: Freud is named as the start of a tradition that looked for the roots of personality in early experience. Erikson (1950), Childhood and Society, built a psychosocial theory of eight stages across life, each centered on a crisis, five of them in childhood and adolescence. So 8 − 5 = 3 adult stages, named in words only.
• Dataset E, in order: trust vs. mistrust (infancy, about birth to 1); autonomy vs. shame and doubt (toddlerhood, about 1 to 3); initiative vs. guilt (early childhood, about 3 to 6); industry vs. inferiority (middle childhood, about 6 to 11); and identity vs. role confusion (adolescence). You need the crisis names in order; the ages beside them are rough guides.
• Behaviorism began with Watson's paper "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It", which held that psychology should study observable behavior. In Skinner's operant conditioning, a consequence that follows a behavior changes how likely it is to happen again. Reinforcement makes the behavior more likely, and punishment makes it less likely. The word punishment describes the effect on behavior, not a recommendation.
• Social learning theory adds that children learn by watching what others do and what happens to them. In the Bobo doll study, Bandura, Ross, and Ross (1961) found that children who watched an adult act aggressively toward an inflatable Bobo doll went on to imitate that aggression more often than children who did not watch. It is evidence for learning by observation, not proof that any single program causes aggression.
• Two lenses named for later: Piaget's cognitive-developmental theory describes four stages of thinking (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, formal operational). Vygotsky's sociocultural theory holds that thinking develops through social interaction with more skilled people and through the tools a culture provides, language above all.
• The ecological model as a theory explains the settings you can see around a child, and it has little to say about the thinking and feeling going on inside the child.
• Ethology looks at behavior in light of evolution, asking how a behavior helps an animal, or a human infant, survive. Lorenz described imprinting in goslings. A critical period is a fixed window in which an ability must develop if it is to develop at all. The course now uses the idea of a sensitive period for most human abilities instead: a time of special readiness when an ability develops most easily, though it can still be learned later with more effort.
• Course example: record R4 (illustrative), at 2½ years in a childcare center's block area, pushes away a caregiver's hand and says, "Me do it." Erikson's lens reads the autonomy side of stage 2. The learning lens asks what has followed doing it alone and whom the child has watched. The ecological lens places the block area in the child's microsystem.
• Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) one theory read as having replaced the others. Cure: each lens adds something. (2) a stage theory read as a fixed timetable. Cure: the ages are approximate. (3) the Bobo doll finding read as proof that one cartoon causes aggression. Cure: it shows learning by watching. (4) "critical period" read as meaning nothing can be learned afterward. Cure: for most abilities the window is a sensitive period.

Week 3 — Studying children: research, observation, and ethics

• The distinctions: correlational against experimental research, and objective description against subjective interpretation.
• Key idea: watch carefully, write down only what you saw, and be honest about what a study can and cannot show.
• The scientific method: ask a question, make a prediction, gather observations, look at what they show, and share the result so others can check it.
• Descriptive methods tell you what children do without testing a cause: naturalistic observation (watching in everyday settings), structured observation (the same situation set up for every child), case studies, interviews, and surveys.
• Correlational research measures whether two things vary together. It can show that they are related but cannot show that one causes the other, because a third thing might explain both. Experimental research changes one thing and compares conditions that children were randomly assigned to, so it can test a cause. Random assignment places each child in a condition by chance, so the groups start out alike.
• Designs: a longitudinal design follows the same children over time, so it can show change within them. A cross-sectional design compares children of different ages at one time, so its differences are between groups. A sequential design starts several age groups at once and follows each over time.
• The five observation tools: the running record is a timed, continuous, word-for-word account in the present tense. The anecdotal record is a brief account of one significant event, written soon after. The checklist marks whether listed behaviors were seen. Time sampling records what a child is doing at set intervals. Event sampling records each time a chosen behavior occurs.
• Two columns: objective description states only what the child did and said, in words any observer present would agree on. Subjective interpretation is a reading of what it might mean, written in a separate column as a possibility. A behavior is defined so precisely that two observers would record it the same way.
• Ethics: informed consent comes from a parent or guardian. Assent is the child's own yes, asked for in language a child that age can follow, and a parent's consent never stands in for it. Add the right to stop and confidentiality. The Society for Research in Child Development sets these out in its Ethical Principles and Standards for Developmental Scientists, approved in 2021. The observation rules and permission script of Dataset F govern every workshop.
• Course example: R4's running record has 3 timed lines, from 9:05 to 9:07, and 9:07 − 9:05 = 2 minutes of continuous recording. "Pushes the caregiver's hand away. Says, 'Me do it.'" is description. "The child was annoyed with the caregiver" is interpretation, so it moves to the other column. The permission script asks for about twenty minutes and makes 4 promises: no interacting, no photos or recordings, no names or identifying details, and no assessing any child.
• Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) correlation read as causation. Cure: only random assignment can test a cause. (2) a single observation read as describing the whole child. Cure: one record is one moment. (3) an interpretation written inside a record, such as "the child was angry". Cure: write "throws the block and cries". (4) a cross-sectional difference read as change within the same children. Cure: it compares different groups. (5) assent read as the same as consent. Cure: the parent agrees, and the child is asked too.

Week 4 — Prenatal development and birth

• The distinctions: the embryonic period against the fetal period, and the Apgar signs.
• Key idea: the major organs form early, so timing matters before birth, and the newborn's first check describes the first minutes, not the future.
• The prenatal periods: the germinal period covers about the first two weeks and ends at implantation, when the fertilized egg attaches to the wall of the uterus. The embryonic period runs about weeks 3 to 8, when the major organs and body structures form. The fetal period runs about week 9 to birth, a time of growth and refinement.
• Genes and environment: a gene is a unit of heredity, and a chromosome is a threadlike structure that holds many genes. Genotype is a person's genetic makeup. Phenotype is the observable characteristics, which result from the genotype interacting with the environment.
• Teratogens are substances or conditions that can harm prenatal development. Their effect depends on timing, dose, and the individual, and the embryonic period is generally the most sensitive time for major structures. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states: "There is no known safe amount of alcohol use during pregnancy."
• Labor has three stages: dilation of the cervix, the birth of the baby, and the delivery of the placenta. The course gives no durations as rules.
• The Apgar score, from Apgar (1953), rates five signs (heart rate, breathing effort, muscle tone, reflex response or grimace, and skin color), each 0, 1, or 2, at 1 and 5 minutes after birth. The maximum is 5 × 2 = 10. MedlinePlus states that a score of 7, 8, or 9 is normal, and a 10 is uncommon.
• The two World Health Organization definitions: low birth weight is a weight at birth of less than 2,500 grams. Preterm birth is a baby born alive before 37 completed weeks of pregnancy. One is about weight and one is about timing, so a baby can meet one, both, or neither.
• Course example: R1 (illustrative) scored 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 7 at 1 minute and 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 = 9 at 5 minutes. Both fall in the normal range, and the totals describe the newborn's condition, not later intelligence.
• Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) the fetal period read as when the major organs form. Cure: that is the embryonic period. (2) a teratogen read as equally harmful at every point. Cure: timing matters. (3) the Apgar score read as predicting intelligence or later development. Cure: it is a check on the first minutes. (4) a score of 7 read as a problem. Cure: 7 is the low end of the normal range.

Week 5 — Infancy and toddlerhood: physical development

• The distinctions: gross motor against fine motor skills, and a range against a deadline.
• Key idea: every age in this course is a typical range, never a deadline. A child outside a range is a reason for a family to talk with a health professional, never a conclusion the course draws.
• The brain: a neuron is a nerve cell that sends signals, and a synapse is the tiny gap where one neuron passes a signal to another. In infancy the brain forms synapses in great numbers. Synaptic pruning then removes unused connections ("use it or lose it"), which strengthens the ones a child uses. Myelination wraps nerve fibers in a fatty coating that speeds signals. Plasticity is the brain's ability to be shaped by experience.
• The six newborn reflexes: a reflex is an automatic, unlearned response. Rooting is turning toward a touch on the cheek. Sucking happens when something touches the roof of the mouth. Moro is a startle in which the arms fling out and then come back in. Palmar grasp is the fingers curling shut on something pressed into the palm. Stepping is stepping motions when held upright with the feet on a flat surface. Babinski is the toes fanning out when the sole is stroked. Most fade in the first months.
• Motor skills: gross motor skills use the large muscles, such as sitting, crawling, and walking. Fine motor skills use the small muscles, especially of the hands, such as grasping a spoon or picking up a small piece of food.
• The windows of achievement, from the WHO Multicentre Growth Reference Study Group (2006), are 1st-to-99th percentile ranges, in months. Sitting without support runs 3.8 to 9.2, standing with assistance 4.8 to 11.4, and hands-and-knees crawling 5.2 to 13.5. Walking with assistance runs 5.9 to 13.7, standing alone 6.9 to 16.9, and walking alone 8.2 to 17.6. Say it in words: most children walk alone somewhere between about 8 and 18 months.
• Safe sleep, as the American Academy of Pediatrics' 2022 policy statement states it: place babies on their backs for every sleep, for all naps and at night, until age 1, on a firm, flat, non-inclined surface. The NICHD launched Back to Sleep in 1994 and expanded and renamed it Safe to Sleep in 2012, 2012 − 1994 = 18 years later.
• Nutrition: the World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months, with breastfeeding continuing up to 2 years of age or beyond. That is the WHO's recommendation, and the course respects the many families who feed infants in other ways.
• Course example: R2 (illustrative), at 9 months, sits and crawls inside both windows, and R3, at 14 months, walks alone inside 8.2 to 17.6. The walking-alone window is 17.6 − 8.2 = 9.4 months wide.
• Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) a milestone age read as a deadline. Cure: a window is a range. (2) pruning read as damage. Cure: it strengthens the connections in use. (3) reflexes read as learned. Cure: they are present without practice. (4) stomach sleeping read as safe for an infant who "sleeps better" that way. Cure: the AAP says on the back for every sleep. (5) crawling read as a required step before walking. Cure: some children skip it.

Week 6 — Infancy and toddlerhood: cognitive and language development

• The distinctions: object permanence, and receptive against expressive language.
• Key idea: infants are active explorers, and both their understanding of hidden things and their language grow in steps.
• Piaget's core ideas: a scheme is an organized pattern of action or thought. Assimilation is fitting a new experience into a scheme the child already has. Accommodation is changing a scheme, or building a new one, to fit a new experience. Equilibration is the push toward balance between the two.
• The sensorimotor stage runs from about birth to 2, and infants learn through their senses and actions. Its six substages, in order, start with reflexes, then repeating simple actions on the infant's own body, then repeating actions that make something interesting happen. Next come coordinating actions toward a goal, at about 8 to 12 months, and experimenting with new actions, at about 12 to 18 months. Last come the beginnings of mental representation. The ages are approximate.
• Object permanence is knowing that a thing still exists when you can no longer see it, and it grows in steps. In the A-not-B error, an infant who has found a toy under one cover (A) keeps searching there after watching it hidden under a second cover (B). Piaget placed it in the fourth substage.
• Deferred imitation is copying an action seen earlier, after a delay, when the model is no longer there. It shows that a child holds a memory of the action in mind.
• Looking-time research measures how long babies look at possible and impossible events. It suggests infants know some things about objects earlier than reaching tasks show. The course treats it as adding detail to Piaget's picture, not overturning it.
• Language: receptive language is understanding words; expressive language is producing them, and receptive usually runs ahead. The typical sequence, with wide timing, runs from cooing (soft vowel sounds) to babbling (repeated consonant-vowel strings such as "ba-ba-ba") to first words to two-word combinations. Infant-directed speech is the higher-pitched, slower, exaggerated speech adults use with babies, and it holds attention and highlights the sounds of language. Children exposed to two languages typically reach early milestones on a typical timeline when both languages are counted together.
• The CDC's checklists: the "Learn the Signs. Act Early." checklists were revised in 2022, so each lists what most children (75 percent or more) do by that age, and checklists were added for 15 and 30 months. A missed item is a reason to talk with a health professional, never a diagnosis.
• Course example: R2 (illustrative) finds a toy twice under the left cloth (A), watches it hidden under the right cloth (B), then searches under A. That is the A-not-B error, at 9 months, inside the fourth substage. R3's 3 words are expressive language.
• Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) infants read as passive. Cure: they actively explore. (2) object permanence read as appearing all at once. Cure: it grows in steps. (3) babbling read as meaningless noise. Cure: it practices the sounds of the language. (4) bilingual exposure read as delaying language. Cure: count both languages. (5) a checklist read as a diagnostic test. Cure: it is a reason to talk with a professional.

Week 7 — Infancy and toddlerhood: social-emotional development

• The distinction: temperament against attachment.
• Key idea: temperament is a child's own style across many situations, while attachment is a bond with one particular person.
• Early emotions: social smiling is a smile aimed at a person's face, in the first months. Stranger anxiety is wariness or distress at an unfamiliar person, and separation anxiety is distress when a familiar caregiver leaves; both commonly appear in the second half of an infant's first year. Social referencing is checking a trusted adult's face to decide how to react.
• Temperament is the stable early differences among children in activity, mood, and reactivity. Thomas and Chess, from the New York Longitudinal Study, described three types in Temperament and Development: easy, difficult, and slow-to-warm-up, and many children fit none of the three. No percentages are keyed. Goodness of fit is the match between a child's temperament and the demands and expectations of the caregiving setting.
• What builds a bond: In Harlow (1958), "The Nature of Love", infant monkeys clung to a soft cloth "mother" rather than a wire one that gave milk. Comfort, not feeding alone, underlies attachment. Bowlby's attachment theory, in Attachment, describes an evolved bond that keeps infants close to caregivers and gives them a secure base for exploring.
• The Strange Situation, from Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, and Wall (1978), Patterns of Attachment, is a structured laboratory procedure of brief separations and reunions. It described three classifications: secure, insecure-avoidant, and insecure-resistant (also called ambivalent). Main and Solomon later described a fourth, disorganized, so 3 + 1 = 4. Each is a research category for a pattern of behavior in one procedure, never a label for a child, and attachment behavior varies across cultures.
• Erikson's first two stages: trust vs. mistrust (infancy, about birth to 1), where reliable, responsive care helps an infant expect that people can be trusted; and autonomy vs. shame and doubt (toddlerhood, about 1 to 3), where a toddler pushes to do things alone.
• The emerging self: mirror self-recognition, shown when a toddler touches a mark on their own face after seeing it in a mirror, typically appears in the second year.
• Course example: R3 (illustrative), at 14 months, cries when the parent leaves, accepts a caregiver's comfort, plays while glancing back, and at pickup reaches for the parent and calms within a minute. How hard the child cries may reflect temperament. Whom the child turns to and uses as a secure base is attachment. R3 is one morning, not the Strange Situation, so it gets no classification.
• Predictable mistakes → cures: (1) attachment read as caused by feeding. Cure: Harlow's monkeys chose comfort. (2) a temperament type read as fixed destiny. Cure: it is a style, and fit matters. (3) a "difficult" temperament read as bad parenting. Cure: it describes the child's style, not the parenting. (4) a classification read as a label for a child. Cure: it describes a pattern in one procedure. (5) childcare outside the home read as preventing secure attachment. Cure: it does not by itself, and the effects of long hours are debated with no side taken.

Week 8's new idea (not tested on the midterm)

Week 8 adds one piece of new material: play as a window on development. Parten (1932), "Social Participation among Pre-School Children", described six categories, in this order: unoccupied, solitary (independent), onlooker, parallel, associative, and cooperative. Each describes what a child is doing at a moment, not a stage a child leaves behind. Parallel play is playing beside another child with similar materials but no shared goal, and it is a common, social form of play. In the illustrative play time sample (Dataset C), play with other children covers 6 + 5 + 3 = 14 of 20 intervals, which is 70 percent.

Representative practice

These are fresh variants, not the midterm's questions. Work each worked example yourself first, then compare your steps. Every scenario below is illustrative, invented for this guide, and describes no real child, family, or program. The only real researchers, studies, and health bodies are the ones the course pinned, and every number is computed and checked in advance.

Worked example — one morning at a laundromat, in three domains (Week 1)

An illustrative 3-year-old spends a morning at a laundromat with a grandparent. The child climbs onto a bench, counts "one, two, three" while dropping socks into a basket, and hides behind the grandparent when a stranger says hello, then waves.

1. Physical domain: climbing onto the bench uses the body and its large muscles.
2. Cognitive domain: counting socks uses thinking, memory, and language.
3. Social-emotional domain: hiding, then waving, shows feelings about people.
4. Nature and nurture together: counting needs a maturing brain (nature) and a family that has said the number words aloud (nurture). Neither one alone explains it.

Why it matters: one ordinary morning shows all three domains at once. A question that asks for "the" domain of a behavior wants the one the behavior mostly carries.

Worked example — a new night shift, in nested systems (Week 1)

An illustrative 4-year-old goes to a preschool by day. A parent starts working nights at a warehouse, so a neighbor now does pickup, and the preschool teacher starts sending a daily note home.

• Microsystems: the family home and the preschool, settings the child takes part in directly.
• Mesosystem: the daily note, a link between the preschool and the home.
• Exosystem: the warehouse. The child never goes there, yet its night schedule changes who picks the child up.
• Macrosystem: the culture's laws and values about work hours and who cares for young children.
• Chronosystem: the change itself, a new schedule in the child's life over time.

Why it matters: to place a setting, ask whether the child is in it. If the child is never there but it still reaches the child, it is the exosystem.

Worked example — one scene, three lenses (Week 2)

At an illustrative community pool, a 5-year-old watches an older neighbor jump into the shallow end while the swim group cheers. The 5-year-old then jumps in the same way. Later, a lifeguard blows a whistle each time the child runs on the deck, and over the next lessons the running happens less often.

1. Social learning lens: the child watched another child act and saw what followed, then did the same. That is learning by observation.
2. Behaviorist lens: the whistle follows running, and running becomes less likely. In operant conditioning that consequence is punishment, a word that names its effect on behavior.
3. Ecological lens: the swim lesson is a microsystem, a setting the child takes part in directly.
4. What each leaves out: none of the three says how the child's thinking is organized at this age, which is the question Piaget's lens asks.

Why it matters: every lens explains part of one scene, and no single theory is the one right answer.

Worked example — going together, or causing? (Week 3)

An illustrative community garden program finds that children who come to more of its weekly sessions name more kinds of vegetables. A flyer says, "Gardening teaches children their vegetables."

1. Kind of research: correlational. The program measured two things and found they go together. No one was assigned to come or stay home.
2. What it cannot show: that the sessions caused the naming. A third thing, such as families who cook together at home, could explain both.
3. Turning it into an experiment: randomly assign children either to the garden sessions or to an art program. Then change only the program, and compare.
4. Rewriting the flyer: "Children who came more often named more vegetables." That sentence reports the link without claiming a cause.

Why it matters: look for random assignment. Without it, a study shows that two things go together and stops there.

Worked example — the right tool and the right column (Week 3)

An illustrative childcare center wants to know how often one toddler grabs toys from other children during a morning. An observer writes three lines:

• "Takes a truck from another child's hands."
• "Says, 'Mine!'"
• "Was jealous of the other child."

1. The tool: the center asks how often one chosen behavior occurs, so the fit is event sampling, recording each time the grab happens.
2. The columns: the first two lines are objective description of what the child did and said. "Was jealous" is subjective interpretation, so it moves to the interpretation column as a possibility.
3. Defining the behavior: "grabs" is defined as "takes an object out of another child's hands", so a second observer would mark the same moments.
4. The ethics check: the record names no child, adult, or center, and it identifies the child by role and age only.

Why it matters: the question you ask chooses the tool, and the record holds only what any observer present would agree on.

Worked example — two study designs (Week 3)

An illustrative research team wants to know how pretend play changes from age 3 to age 6.

• Plan A: visit one group of 3-year-olds and a different group of 6-year-olds in the same month. That is a cross-sectional design, and any difference is between two groups of children.
• Plan B: follow the same children from age 3 to age 6, visiting them again and again. That is a longitudinal design, and it can show change within the same children. The span is 6 − 3 = 3 years.
• Plan C: start a group of 3-year-olds and a group of 4-year-olds at once, and follow both. That is a sequential design.

Why it matters: only a design that follows the same children can show how those children changed.

Worked example — an Apgar score at two checks (Week 4)

In an illustrative delivery room, a newborn's signs are scored at each check.

An illustrative newborn's five Apgar sign scores at the 1-minute and 5-minute checks, with each total

Sign	1 minute	5 minutes
Heart rate	2	2
Breathing effort	1	2
Muscle tone	1	2
Reflex response	1	1
Skin color	2	2
Total	7	9

1. The 1-minute total: 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 7.
2. The 5-minute total: 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 2 = 9.
3. The change: 9 − 7 = 2. Breathing effort and muscle tone each rose by 1, and 1 + 1 = 2 matches the change.
4. The gap from the maximum: 10 − 9 = 1.
5. The reading: both totals fall in MedlinePlus's normal range of 7, 8, or 9.

Why it matters: the Apgar score is a sum of five sign scores read against a range. It describes how a newborn is doing in the first minutes and says nothing about the child's future.

Worked example — periods and definitions (Week 4)

An illustrative prenatal class reads three statements about a pregnancy.

1. "The fertilized egg has now attached to the wall of the uterus." That is implantation, which ends the germinal period, about the first two weeks.
2. "The heart and the other major organs are forming." That is the embryonic period, about weeks 3 to 8, generally the most sensitive time for major structures.
3. "It is week 30, and the baby is gaining weight." Week 30 falls in the fetal period, about week 9 to birth.

Then one birth. A baby is born after 37 completed weeks of pregnancy and weighs less than 2,500 grams. That baby meets the low birth weight definition but not the preterm one, because the timing passes and the weight does not.

Why it matters: the organs form before the fetal period begins, and weight and timing are two separate definitions.

Worked example — how wide is each window? (Week 5)

Use the WHO windows of achievement (2006), each a 1st-to-99th percentile range in months. Subtract the early end from the late end.

Three WHO 2006 windows of achievement, in months, with each window's width worked out

Milestone	Window (months)	Width (months)
Standing with assistance	4.8 to 11.4	11.4 − 4.8 = 6.6
Walking with assistance	5.9 to 13.7	13.7 − 5.9 = 7.8
Standing alone	6.9 to 16.9	16.9 − 6.9 = 10.0

1. Widest of the three: standing alone, at 10.0 months.
2. Against walking alone: the walking-alone window is 9.4 months wide, so standing alone is 10.0 − 9.4 = 0.6 months wider.
3. In words: children who stand alone at very different ages are all inside one wide range.

Now sort an illustrative family picnic. Kicking a ball and climbing onto a bench are gross motor skills, using the large muscles. Picking up blueberries one at a time and pulling the lid off a container are fine motor skills, using the small muscles of the hands.

Why it matters: a window several months wide is a range of typical ages, and it is never a deadline for one child.

Worked example — a new scheme, and a hidden ball (Week 6)

At an illustrative childcare center's infant room, a 13-month-old who knows how to shake a rattle is handed a set of plastic keys. The toddler shakes them the same way. Then the toddler is handed a soft cloth book that makes no sound, shakes it, and soon starts turning its pages instead.

1. Shaking the keys: assimilation, because a new object is fitted into an old scheme.
2. Turning the pages: accommodation, because the scheme changes to fit an object that does not rattle.

Later, a caregiver hides a soft ball under a pillow two times, and a 10-month-old finds it both times. Then, while the infant watches, the caregiver tucks the ball under a folded towel. The infant lifts the pillow.

1. Naming the places: the pillow, where the ball was found first, is A; the towel, where it went last, is B.
2. The reading: searching under A after watching the ball go under B is the A-not-B error. Piaget placed it in the fourth sensorimotor substage, at about 8 to 12 months. In the fifth substage, at about 12 to 18 months, the typical response is to search under B.

Why it matters: searching at all shows object permanence that is still growing, one step at a time.

Worked example — one toddler in two settings (Week 7)

An illustrative toddler, 18 months old, is observed on two days. At a neighbor's backyard party, a balloon pops, and the toddler screams loudly and takes a long time to settle, whoever holds them. At a crowded bus stop on another day, a horn sounds, and the toddler again reacts with a loud, long cry. On both days, the toddler crawls back to the grandparent who raises them, then toddles off to play, glancing over at that grandparent every so often.

1. Temperament: the strong, slow-to-settle reaction shows up in two settings and with different people nearby. That is the child's own style of reactivity.
2. Attachment: the grandparent is the one person the toddler goes back to and keeps an eye on during play. That is a bond with a particular person, used as a secure base.
3. What the record is not: these are two everyday observations, not the Strange Situation, so the course assigns no classification.

Why it matters: ask whether a behavior is about the child's style everywhere or about one relationship. Style everywhere is temperament; the person sought out is attachment.

Worked example — finding a better fit (Week 7)

An illustrative 2-year-old reacts intensely, adapts slowly to change, and has irregular routines, which fits Thomas and Chess's description of a difficult temperament. Two childcare rooms differ.

• Room 1 changes the day's order without warning and moves the children between activities quickly.
• Room 2 keeps the same order each day and gives a few minutes of warning before each change.

The reading: Room 2 offers better goodness of fit, a closer match between how this child reacts and what the room asks of the child. The temperament describes the child's style, and it says nothing about the quality of the parenting.

Why it matters: the same temperament can do well or struggle depending on the fit, so a type is never a fixed destiny.

Self-check questions

Try each one, then read the check and the one-line why.

1. Name the three domains and one area each covers. Check: physical (the body, the brain, motor skills, health); cognitive (thinking, memory, language, learning); social-emotional (feelings, relationships, identity). Why: every later week reads a child in all three.
2. Which period is an illustrative 8-year-old in, and why is the edge of a period fuzzy? Check: middle childhood, about 6 to 11. Why: the periods are conventions, and no child changes overnight on a birthday.
3. Put Erikson's five crises of childhood and adolescence in order. Check: trust vs. mistrust; autonomy vs. shame and doubt; initiative vs. guilt; industry vs. inferiority; identity vs. role confusion. Why: the crisis names come in a fixed order, and the ages beside them are rough guides.
4. What three things does a developmental theory do, in the course's terms? Check: it explains, it predicts, and research can test it. Why: the course uses several theories because each explains some parts of development better than others.
5. A team compares a group of 2-year-olds with a different group of 5-year-olds on one day. Can it show how the same children changed? Check: no; it is cross-sectional, so its differences are between groups. Why: only following the same children over time shows change within them.
6. Which prenatal period ends with implantation? Check: the germinal period, about the first two weeks. Why: implantation is when the fertilized egg attaches to the wall of the uterus.
7. What is the highest possible Apgar total, and why? Check: 10, because 5 signs × 2 = 10. Why: each sign is scored 0, 1, or 2.
8. A newborn startles at a loud sound, and the arms fling out and then come back in. Which reflex is it? Check: the Moro reflex. Why: it is an automatic, unlearned startle that fades in the first months.
9. How many years passed between the launch of Back to Sleep and its renaming as Safe to Sleep? Check: 2012 − 1994 = 18 years. Why: the NICHD launched the campaign in 1994 and expanded and renamed it in 2012.
10. A toddler brings a hat when asked, "Where's your hat?", and says only "hat". Which kind of language does each part show? Check: bringing the hat is receptive language; saying "hat" is expressive language. Why: understanding usually runs ahead of producing.
11. The CDC's 2022 checklists list what 75 percent or more of children do by an age. Up to what share of children may not yet do a listed item? Check: 100 − 75 = 25 percent, or 1 in every 4. Why: a missed item is a reason to talk with a health professional, never a diagnosis.
12. How many years separate Harlow's "The Nature of Love" from Patterns of Attachment? Check: 1978 − 1958 = 20 years. Why: Harlow showed that comfort underlies the bond, and Ainsworth and colleagues later measured attachment patterns in a laboratory procedure.
13. An illustrative 3-month-old smiles at a grandparent's face during a diaper change. Which early emotion is it? Check: social smiling. Why: it is a smile aimed at a person's face, and it appears in the first months.

Check yourself — choose one. Write two or three sentences to a friend.

• (a) Explain why the A-not-B error shows object permanence that is still growing, rather than none at all.
• (b) Explain why one morning at a childcare drop-off cannot tell you a toddler's attachment classification.

Either one rehearses an explain-why skill the midterm checks.

Watch before the exam

These nine videos come from the course's vetted Week 8 pool, and every one has captions. Each was already linked on a readings page in Weeks 1 to 8. Use them to review and to connect weeks, not to learn anything new.

• 3 Domains of Child Development — Maria George (video, 4 min) (captions: automatic) reviews the Week 1 objective on the three domains. It frames nature and nurture as a question of which has the bigger influence, so compare that with the course's position that the two always work together.
• Erikson's 8 Stages of Psychosocial Development Explained — Sprouts (video, 3 min) (captions: creator) reviews the Week 2 objective on Erikson's stages. Watch to about 2:40, through the five stages of childhood and adolescence. Its age brackets differ from the course's approximate periods, a reminder that stage ages are rough, and it speaks of the mother where the course speaks of caregivers.
• Psychological Research: Crash Course Psychology #2 — CrashCourse (video, 11 min) (captions: creator) reviews the Week 3 objective on research methods: naturalistic observation, case studies, surveys, correlation that is not causation, and an experiment with random assignment. Its examples are adults, so match each method to a study of children as you watch.
• Clearing Your View: Staying in Observation — Administration for Children and Families (ACF) (video, 7 min) (captions: creator) reviews the Week 3 objective on keeping description apart from interpretation. Watch the observers rewrite their readings of a toddler as behaviors, the same move as the course's two columns.
• Reproductive System, Part 4 - Pregnancy & Development: Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology #43 — CrashCourse (video, 11 min) (captions: creator) reviews the Week 4 objective on the prenatal periods. Listen for which structures form before the developing baby is called a fetus, around the end of week eight. Its material on hormones and labor goes beyond what the midterm asks.
• Gross v Fine Motor Skills — Teacher Gerard (video, 2 min) (captions: automatic) reviews the Week 5 objective on gross and fine motor skills, using large body movements against small hand movements. Translate each example to an infant or toddler as you watch.
• When will my child start talking? (12 to 30 months) — NHS (video, 2 min) (captions: creator) reviews the Week 6 objective on receptive and expressive language. A health visitor from England's National Health Service traces the steps from understanding words to short sentences: following a request, such as fetching something, shows understanding, and saying words shows producing. The ages it gives are the video's own.
• Infant Temperament — Hill Physicians (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic) reviews the Week 7 objective on temperament as a personal style of responding. When it describes a baby who dislikes being held by relatives, ask which part is temperament and which part is attachment.
• Monkeys and Morality: Crash Course Psychology #19 — CrashCourse (video, 12 min) (captions: creator) is a synthesis across Weeks 2 and 7. Watch the first 7½ minutes, from Harlow's monkeys through the Strange Situation to self-recognition in a mirror, and connect attachment back to Week 2's ethology. It names only three attachment patterns, so add the disorganized pattern yourself, and treat its percentages as the video's own. When it says sensitive mothers "raised" securely attached children, it reads an association as a cause and leaves out every caregiver but the mother.

Study plan

A short countdown, sized to a course that meets twice a week. Count back from the day you plan to sit the midterm.

• Two weeks out: as you finish Week 6, start a one-page list of the course's look-alike pairs. Begin with nature and nurture, correlational and experimental, description and interpretation, and the embryonic and fetal periods. Add gross and fine motor, assimilation and accommodation, and receptive and expressive language. Add temperament and attachment when Week 7 arrives.
• One week out: as you finish Week 7, reread the Week 5 and Week 7 topic reviews and redo their worked examples. Those two weeks hold 10 of the midterm's 25 questions.
• At Week 8's first class session: take the practice exam once, cold and closed-note. Note which objectives cost you the most. Remember that it leans less on Week 7 than the midterm does.
• Three or four days before you sit it: reread the topic reviews for your two weakest objectives, and redo the matching worked examples from scratch without looking.
• Two days before: run the paired exam-prep tutorial (the copy-and-paste chatbot tutor, or its no-AI route) for active recall. Tell it which areas the practice exam exposed.
• The day before: retake the practice exam, explain every miss out loud, and work the self-check questions above. Then say each week's distinction in one sentence.
• Right before: skim the "predictable mistakes → cures" lines for all seven weeks. Then stop studying, and take a few slow breaths.

This guide is for review. The exam-prep tutorial and the practice exam are where you rehearse. Pulling ideas back out of memory, not rereading, is what makes them stick.

Exam format

Every one of the 25 questions counts the same, and Canvas scores the midterm automatically. It checks your own understanding without AI. The questions come one at a time, and there is no going back, so settle each one before you move on.

Test-taking strategies for this material:

• Name the pair before you choose. Most questions turn on two neighboring ideas, such as correlational and experimental research, or temperament and attachment. Say which pair is in play first.
• Ask the one-line test. Goes together, or tested by random assignment? What the child did, or what it might mean? Organs forming, or growth and refinement? Large muscles, or small? Understanding, or producing? The child's style everywhere, or one relationship?
• Read every age as a range. If an option turns a window or a stage age into a deadline, it has slipped.
• Treat "illustrative" as a cue. The scene was invented for the question, so judge it by the course's definitions, and never read a category as a label for a child.
• State guidance as the issuing body states it. An option that softens or stretches a health body's words, or turns a checklist into a diagnosis, has slipped.
• For a "pick every option that fits" question, judge each statement on its own, as if it were a true-or-false question.

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