Human Growth and Development Study
Guide – WGU D202 Exam Questions with
Verified Solutions 2025
Multidirectional - Correct Answers ✔-Some dimensions expand and others shrink
Multidimensional - Correct Answers ✔-Has biological, cognitive, and
socioemotional dimensions
Plastic - Correct Answers ✔-The capacity for change
Lifelong - Correct Answers ✔-Early adulthood is not the endpoint of development;
no age period dominates development
Multidisciplinary - Correct Answers ✔-Various areas of study have an interest in
the field of development through the life span
Contextual - Correct Answers ✔-All development occurs within a context, or
setting (social, cultural, and historic factors)
Nature - Correct Answers ✔-Nature refers to an organism's biological inheritance.
Nature Example - Correct Answers ✔-We walk before we talk, speak one word
before two words, grow rapidly in infancy and less so in early childhood,
experience a rush of sex hormones in puberty, reach the peak of our physical
strength in late adolescence and early adulthood, and then physically decline.
Nurture - Correct Answers ✔-Nurture refers to an organism's environmental
experiences
Nurture Example - Correct Answers ✔-Experiences run the gamut from the
individual's biological environment (nutrition, medical care, drugs, and physical
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accidents) to the social environment (family, peers, schools, community, media,
and culture)
Continuity - Correct Answers ✔-focuses on the degree to which the development
involves a gradual, cumulative change
continuity example - Correct Answers ✔-An oak grows from a seedling to a giant
oak, it becomes more of an oak - its development is continuous
discontinuity - Correct Answers ✔-focuses on the degree to which development
involves distinct stages
Discontinuity example - Correct Answers ✔-as an insect grows from a caterpillar
to a chrysalis to a butterfly, it passes through a sequence of stages in which change
is qualitative rather than quantitatively different. Similarly, at some point a child
moves from not being able to think abstractlyl about the world to being able to do
so.
Stability - Correct Answers ✔-Debate about whether we become older renditions
of our early experience
Stability Example - Correct Answers ✔-Many argue that if an individual is shy
throughout life, this stability is due to heredity and possibly early experiences in
which the infant or young child encountered considerable stress when interacting
with people
Change - Correct Answers ✔-We develop into someone different from who we
were at an earlier point in development
Change example - Correct Answers ✔-Developmentalists who emphasize change
take the more optimistic view that later experiences can produce change. Recall
that in the life-span perspective, plasticity, the potential for change, exists
throughout the life span.
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Freud's Theories - Correct Answers ✔-Freud believed that people's problems were
the result of experiences early in life. He thought that as children grow up, their
focus on pleasure and sexual impulses shifts from the mouth to the anus and
eventually to the genitals. As a result, we go through five stages of psychosexual
development: Oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
Erikson's Theory - Correct Answers ✔-Focuses on Psychosocial. Eight Stages of
human development. Each stage consists of unique developmental task that
confronts individuals with a crisis that must be resolved.
Trust versus mistrust - Correct Answers ✔-Erikson's first psychosocial stage,
which is experienced in the first year of life. The development of trust during
infancy sets the stage for a lifelong expectation that the world will be a good and
pleasant place to live.
Autonomy versus Shame and doubt - Correct Answers ✔-Erikson's second stage.
This stage occurs in late infancy and toddlerhodd ( 1-3 years) after gaining trust in
their caregivers, infants begin to discover that their behavior is their own. They
start to assert their sense of independence or autonomy. They realize their will. If
Infants and toddlers are restrained too much or punished too harshly, they are
likely to develop a sense of shame and doubt.
Initiative versus guilt - Correct Answers ✔-Erikson's Third stage of development
occurs during the preschool years. As preschool children encounter a widening
social world, they face new challenges that require active purposeful, responsible
behavior. Feelings of guilt may arise, though, if the child is irresponsible and is
made to feel anxious.
Industry versus inferiority - Correct Answers ✔-Erikson's fourth developmental
stages, occurring approximately during the elementary school years. Children now
need to direct their energy toward mastering knowledge and intellectual skills. The
negative outcome is that the child may develop a sense of inferiority -- feeling
incompetent and unproductive.
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Identity Versus identity confusion - Correct Answers ✔-Erikson's fifth
developmental stage that occurs during adolescent years. If adolescents explore
roles in a healthy manner and arrive at a positive path to follow in life, then they
achieve a positive identity, if they do not, identity confusion reigns.
Intimacy versus isolation - Correct Answers ✔-Erikson's sixth developmental
stage, which occurs during early adulthood. Individuals face the developmental
task of forming intimate relationships. If young adults form healthy friendships and
an intimate relationship with another, intimacy will be achieved; if not, isolation
will result.
Generativity versus stagnation - Correct Answers ✔-Erikson's seventh
developmental stage that occurs during middle adulthood. By generativity Erikson
means primarily a concern for helping the younger generation to develop and lead
useful lives. The feeling of having done nothing to help the next generation is
stagnation.
Integrity versus despair - Correct Answers ✔-Erikson's eighth and final stage of
development which occurs during late adulthood. During this stage a person
reflects on the past. If the person's life review reveals a life well spent, integrity
will be achieved; if not the retrospective glances will likely yield doubt or gloom.
Piaget's cognitive Developmental Theory - Correct Answers ✔-Children go
through four stages of cognitive development as they actively construct their
understanding of the world. Two processes underlie this cognitive construction of
the world: organization and adaptation. To make sense of our world we organize
our experiences.
Sensorimotor stage - Correct Answers ✔-Piaget's first stage that lasts from birth to
2 years old. Infants in this stage construct an understanding of the world by
coordinating sensory experiences (Such as seeing and hearing) with physical,
motoric actions
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