Growth and Lifespan Development
Piaget and Vygotsky
Sensorimotor (object permanence), preoperational (egocentrism, no conservation, appearance-based reasoning), concrete operational (roughly 7–11: conservation and classification but not abstract hypothesis testing), formal operational (abstract and hypothetical reasoning). Vygotsky: learning is social; the zone of proximal development is what a child can do with guidance but not alone, and scaffolding is that support.
Attachment and temperament
Ainsworth's strange situation: secure (distress at separation, quick comfort on return), avoidant (little distress, ignores caregiver), ambivalent/resistant (intense distress, not soothed, angry), disorganized (contradictory, frozen behavior). Thomas and Chess: easy, difficult, slow-to-warm. Temperament is a biologically based style; attachment is a relational pattern-do not substitute one for the other.
Lifespan
Erikson's order matters: trust/mistrust, autonomy/shame, initiative/guilt, industry/inferiority, identity/role confusion (adolescence), intimacy/isolation, generativity/stagnation, integrity/despair. Kohlberg: preconventional (punishment, self-interest), conventional (approval, law and order), postconventional (social contract, universal principles); Gilligan argues an ethic of care is undervalued. Baumrind: authoritative (high warmth plus high demands) is most consistently favorable-not authoritarian.
Aging
Crystallized intelligence holds; fluid intelligence and processing speed decline. Distinguish delirium (acute, fluctuating, a medical emergency), dementia (progressive cognitive decline), and depression (mood symptoms prominent, often presenting as cognitive complaint).
Rule of thumb
Match the age to the stage before reading the rest of the stem. Most items are solvable from age alone, and the distractor is a neighboring stage that sounds plausible.