AP Psychology: Cognitive Development (Drill 14)

Question 1. A 4-year-old watches his mother pour juice from a short, wide cup into a tall, narrow cup. He then insists the tall cup has "more juice" even though he just saw the same juice poured. According to Piaget, this child is best described as lacking which ability?

• A) Object permanence
• B) Conservation ✓
• C) Theory of mind
• D) Metacognition

Explanation: Conservation is the understanding that quantity remains the same despite changes in shape or appearance. Children in Piaget's preoperational stage typically fail conservation tasks because they center on one dimension, here, the height of the liquid, and ignore the compensating change in width. (A) is wrong because object permanence is a sensorimotor-stage milestone acquired around 8–9 months; a 4-year-old has it. (D) is true-but-irrelevant: a 4-year-old's metacognition is limited, but that is not what failing this specific task demonstrates.

Question 2. A preschool teacher puts out a new puzzle that is just slightly too difficult for her students to finish on their own. She gives hints and asks leading questions until each child can solve it. According to Vygotsky, the teacher is working in the child's:

• A) Schema
• B) Sensorimotor stage
• C) Zone of proximal development ✓
• D) Preoperational stage under the conditions the question describes

Explanation: The zone of proximal development is the gap between what a child can do alone and what the child can do with help from a more skilled partner. The teacher's hints and leading questions are scaffolding, the temporary support that moves a child through the ZPD toward independent mastery. (A) is a Piagetian term for a mental framework, not a Vygotskian one. (B) and (D) are Piaget's stages and describe types of thinking by age, not the teaching interaction being described; they are true-but-irrelevant if a student grabs a developmental-stage label.

Question 3. Mei is 15. When her friend asks whether she would still want to be friends if they had grown up in very different countries, Mei can reason carefully about the hypothetical, consider multiple possibilities, and weigh values that do not match her actual experience. According to Piaget, Mei's reasoning best illustrates:

• A) Sensorimotor thought, because she is using memory of experiences with her friend in this developmental example
• B) Preoperational thought, because she is imagining something that did not happen
• C) Concrete operational thought, because she is reasoning logically
• D) Formal operational thought, because she can reason about abstract and hypothetical situations ✓

Explanation: Formal operational thought, Piaget's fourth stage beginning around age 12, is defined by the capacity to reason about abstract concepts and hypothetical "what if" situations, exactly what Mei is doing. (C) is a common misconception trap: concrete operational thinkers can reason logically, but only about concrete, real situations, not hypotheticals. (B) misreads the task, pretending is not the same as hypothetical reasoning. (A) is wrong because sensorimotor thought is the infant stage focused on motor actions and immediate sensation.

Question 4. A researcher wants to test whether Piaget underestimated infants' cognitive abilities. She designs a study in which 5-month-old infants watch a scene where a screen is raised to hide a block; a second block is then placed behind the screen; finally, when the screen drops, only one block is visible. The researcher measures how long each infant stares at this outcome versus a consistent two-block outcome. Longer looking at the one-block event is interpreted as surprise. What is the dependent variable in this study?

• A) Whether the infant has developed object permanence
• B) The looking time at each outcome ✓
• C) The number of blocks placed behind the screen
• D) The age of the infant in months

Explanation: The dependent variable is what is measured and allowed to vary in response to the manipulation, here, the infants' looking time. (A) is the researcher's interpretation of the data, not the measured variable itself, a classic confusion between a variable and the construct it is used to infer. (C) describes what the researcher manipulates, making it closer to an independent variable. (D) is true-but-irrelevant: age is neither manipulated nor treated as the outcome of interest.

Question 5. A researcher runs a classic false-belief task on 120 children and reports the following percentages passing the task by age:

• Age 3: 18%
• Age 4: 52%
• Age 5: 81%
• Age 6: 89%

A student looks at the data and makes four claims. Which claim is best supported by these data alone?

• A) The data show that theory of mind develops rapidly between ages 3 and 5 in this sample. ✓
• B) The data show that children younger than 3 have no theory of mind at all.
• C) The data show that by age 6, children have a fully mature theory of mind comparable to adults.
• D) The data show that theory of mind develops more quickly in children with larger working memory capacity.

Explanation: The only claim supported by these data alone is the sharp jump in pass rates from 18% at age 3 to 81% at age 5. (B) overgeneralizes: no children under 3 were tested, so the data cannot speak to that group. (C) also overreaches, 89% at age 6 is not "fully mature," and no adults were included for comparison. (D) is a genuine finding in the broader literature connecting theory of mind to working memory, but it is true-but-irrelevant here because no working-memory data were collected in this study.