Child Life Certification Study Guide Questions to prepare for
national certification
Father of the attachment theory- attachment behaviors formed in infancy and can shape attachment
relationships in adulthood - ✔✔✔John Bowlby
theorist that conducted a lab procedure to assess infant attachment style. Alternated between the
infant's mother being present in the room and a stranger being in the room.
Believed attachment security depends on how sensitive and responsive a caregiver is to an infant's
signals - ✔✔✔Mary Ainsworth
Ainsworth's 3 types of attachment - ✔✔✔secure, avoidant, resistant/ambivalent
Bowlby's 3 phases of separation: - ✔✔✔protest, despair, detachment
According to John Bowlby, the PRINCIPLE factor in reducing a child's susceptibility to fear and anxiety is:
- ✔✔✔The presence of an attachment figure
Theorist that believes there are six types of social participation/play:
1. unoccupied
2. onlooker
3. solitary/independent play
4. parallel play
5. associative
6. cooperative - ✔✔✔Parten
Theorists that discovered that children spent significantly less time playing with toys during
hospitalization than they did prior to or following the release from the hospital - ✔✔✔Burstein and
Meichenbaum
,Theorists that discovered that the longer children were hospitalized, the more they engaged in
educative and rough-and-tough play and the less they engaged in exploratory behavior - ✔✔✔Pass and
Bolig
This theorist believed in 4 types of play:
1. functional play
2. dramatic play/symbolic play
3. constructive play
4. games with rules - ✔✔✔Smilansky
This theorist believed that play revolved 5 themes:
1. play as progress
2. play as adaption
3. play as power
4. play as fantasy
5. play itself - ✔✔✔Sutton-Smith
This theorist lists the elements which characterize play:
1. play is pleasurable
2. play has no extrinsic goals
3. play is spontaneous
4. play involves engagement
5. there is systematic relations to what is not play - ✔✔✔Garvey
Observed children's play and developed an activity-based program where children play and manipulate
materials in ways that have meaning in their lives. ((type of school)) - ✔✔✔Maria Montessori
Children learn by having someone model a skill and then trying the skill out with assistance and then
trying it on their own - ✔✔✔Scaffolding
, The distance between what a child can do without help and what a child can do through interaction with
a skilled helper - ✔✔✔Zone of proximal development
These 3 theorists believed that play must be:
1. motivated from within
2. focused on means rather than structured ends
3. internally controlled
4. comprised of non-instrumental actions
5. free-form imposed regulation or rules - ✔✔✔Reuben, Fein, and Vandenberg
2 theorists that developed paradigms of play: Development, learning, therapy, flow, comfort, hope -
✔✔✔Jesse and Garnard
This theorist found that the reluctance of play could be reduced by the presence of an encouraging and
supportive adult - ✔✔✔Bolig
This theorist found that preparation play improved adjustment, coping, and recovery - ✔✔✔Wolfner
Adapatation - ✔✔✔Modifying one's environment to fit one's personal needs
Accomodation - ✔✔✔This refers to the process where a small child needs to alter the pre-existing
schema inside his mind to make sense of new things that he encounters in the outside world
((the child's existing knowledge has to be altered to accommodate the new information the child has
picked up))
Assimilation - ✔✔✔Assimilation is a learning process whereby the child takes on board ideas and
concepts and makes them fit what he or she already knows.
Example: if a child knows what a dog is, but he meets a new breed of dog, he assimilates the information
that a dog can be a different size and color, but it is still a dog.
national certification
Father of the attachment theory- attachment behaviors formed in infancy and can shape attachment
relationships in adulthood - ✔✔✔John Bowlby
theorist that conducted a lab procedure to assess infant attachment style. Alternated between the
infant's mother being present in the room and a stranger being in the room.
Believed attachment security depends on how sensitive and responsive a caregiver is to an infant's
signals - ✔✔✔Mary Ainsworth
Ainsworth's 3 types of attachment - ✔✔✔secure, avoidant, resistant/ambivalent
Bowlby's 3 phases of separation: - ✔✔✔protest, despair, detachment
According to John Bowlby, the PRINCIPLE factor in reducing a child's susceptibility to fear and anxiety is:
- ✔✔✔The presence of an attachment figure
Theorist that believes there are six types of social participation/play:
1. unoccupied
2. onlooker
3. solitary/independent play
4. parallel play
5. associative
6. cooperative - ✔✔✔Parten
Theorists that discovered that children spent significantly less time playing with toys during
hospitalization than they did prior to or following the release from the hospital - ✔✔✔Burstein and
Meichenbaum
,Theorists that discovered that the longer children were hospitalized, the more they engaged in
educative and rough-and-tough play and the less they engaged in exploratory behavior - ✔✔✔Pass and
Bolig
This theorist believed in 4 types of play:
1. functional play
2. dramatic play/symbolic play
3. constructive play
4. games with rules - ✔✔✔Smilansky
This theorist believed that play revolved 5 themes:
1. play as progress
2. play as adaption
3. play as power
4. play as fantasy
5. play itself - ✔✔✔Sutton-Smith
This theorist lists the elements which characterize play:
1. play is pleasurable
2. play has no extrinsic goals
3. play is spontaneous
4. play involves engagement
5. there is systematic relations to what is not play - ✔✔✔Garvey
Observed children's play and developed an activity-based program where children play and manipulate
materials in ways that have meaning in their lives. ((type of school)) - ✔✔✔Maria Montessori
Children learn by having someone model a skill and then trying the skill out with assistance and then
trying it on their own - ✔✔✔Scaffolding
, The distance between what a child can do without help and what a child can do through interaction with
a skilled helper - ✔✔✔Zone of proximal development
These 3 theorists believed that play must be:
1. motivated from within
2. focused on means rather than structured ends
3. internally controlled
4. comprised of non-instrumental actions
5. free-form imposed regulation or rules - ✔✔✔Reuben, Fein, and Vandenberg
2 theorists that developed paradigms of play: Development, learning, therapy, flow, comfort, hope -
✔✔✔Jesse and Garnard
This theorist found that the reluctance of play could be reduced by the presence of an encouraging and
supportive adult - ✔✔✔Bolig
This theorist found that preparation play improved adjustment, coping, and recovery - ✔✔✔Wolfner
Adapatation - ✔✔✔Modifying one's environment to fit one's personal needs
Accomodation - ✔✔✔This refers to the process where a small child needs to alter the pre-existing
schema inside his mind to make sense of new things that he encounters in the outside world
((the child's existing knowledge has to be altered to accommodate the new information the child has
picked up))
Assimilation - ✔✔✔Assimilation is a learning process whereby the child takes on board ideas and
concepts and makes them fit what he or she already knows.
Example: if a child knows what a dog is, but he meets a new breed of dog, he assimilates the information
that a dog can be a different size and color, but it is still a dog.
