Child Development
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50 free Child Development trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A newborn arrives able to do very little, and within a few years the same child is walking, arguing and telling jokes. How that happens has fascinated parents, doctors and psychologists for well over a century, and the story is full of surprises: ingenious experiments, theories built from patient observation of ordinary babies, and advice that reversed itself within a generation. This quiz covers the ground a child development course does, in trivia form. You will be asked to place everyday milestones at the right age, match the big stage theories to the thinkers behind them, recognise the classic studies of bonding, learning and self-control, and recall a few facts about newborn bodies that sound made up but are true. It suits students revising for a child development or psychology class, early years staff and teachers, and parents who want to test what they think they know. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you guess wrong.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A 1993 study in Nature sparked the myth that playing babies which composer's music makes them smarter?
Mozart
Mozart was the composer, though the original study found only a 15-minute boost in spatial reasoning among 36 college students. Georgia's governor later proposed funding a classical recording for every newborn.
Q 02Walter Mischel's Stanford study of delayed gratification in preschoolers is popularly named after which sweet treat?
Marshmallow
Marshmallow gave the test its name: a child left alone with one for about 15 minutes earned a second by not eating it. Children who preferred could wait for a pretzel stick instead.
Q 03Which children's TV show, launched in 1969, was the first to build its content around a formal curriculum?
Sesame Street
Sesame Street was also the first show whose educational effects were formally studied. Its producers had writers work alongside educators and researchers from the very start.
Q 04Albert Bandura's 1961 study of imitated aggression had children watch an adult attack which toy?
Bobo doll
Bobo doll is the name of the inflatable toy the adult punched and struck with a mallet. Bandura used the results to argue that children learn by observing and copying others.
Q 05Peekaboo delights young babies because they have not yet grasped which concept, first studied by Jean Piaget?
Object permanence
Object permanence is knowing that things still exist when out of sight. Piaget tested it by hiding a favourite toy under a blanket and watching whether the baby went looking for it.
Q 06Harry Harlow's infant rhesus monkeys clung to a surrogate mother covered in what, over a wire one holding their milk?
Cloth
Cloth beat food: the monkeys visited the wire mother only when hungry, then returned. Harlow took it as proof that comfort, not feeding, builds the bond between infant and mother.
Q 07The practice of holding premature babies skin-to-skin on a parent's bare chest is named after which animal?
Kangaroo
Kangaroo care was developed in Bogotá, Colombia, as an alternative to scarce incubators. Fathers turn out to be as effective as mothers at keeping the baby warm.
Q 08Daily 'tummy time' became necessary after a 1994 campaign urged parents to put babies to sleep in which position?
On their backs
On their backs is the advice that roughly halved sudden infant death syndrome. The side effect was a sharp rise in flattened skulls, which time spent face down while awake helps prevent.
Q 09Which type of school for young children did the educator Friedrich Fröbel create in 1837 and name in 1840?
Kindergarten
Kindergarten was Fröbel's own coinage, a 'garden of children' where the young could grow in a natural way. He also manufactured play materials for his pupils at Bad Blankenburg.
Q 10Which naturalist kept a diary of his baby son's smiles and cries and published it in the journal Mind in 1877?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin recorded the gestures and expressions of his firstborn, William, for three years. He noted the baby following a candle with his eyes at just nine days old.
Q 11In Erik Erikson's eight-stage theory of psychosocial development, which conflict does a baby face in the first year?
Trust vs. mistrust
Trust vs. mistrust is settled by whether caregivers reliably meet the infant's needs. Erikson held that a baby who learns to trust carries the virtue of hope into every later stage.
Q 12Jean Piaget's four stages of cognitive development begin with which one, lasting from birth until language arrives?
Sensorimotor
Sensorimotor describes babies learning through their senses and movements before words arrive. Piaget saw them move from pure reflexes at birth to the beginnings of symbolic thought.
Q 13Jean Piaget poured liquid from a short beaker into a tall, thin one to test children's grasp of which concept?
Q 21On the CDC's developmental checklists, which of these do most babies manage by the age of two months?
Smiling in response
Smiling in response to a voice or a smile is on the CDC's two-month list, along with holding the head up during tummy time. Rolling over is not expected until about six months.
Q 22The CDC's checklists expect most babies to have learned which of these by their first birthday?
Waving bye-bye
Waving bye-bye sits on the CDC's one-year list beside calling a parent mama or dada. Walking without holding on is not listed until 18 months, when at least three in four toddlers can do it.
Q 23Strings of repeated syllables such as 'mamama', which the CDC lists as a nine-month milestone, are known as what?
Conservation
Conservation is knowing that an amount stays the same when its container changes shape. Children under about seven usually insist the taller glass now holds more.
Q 14Which Soviet psychologist, who died of tuberculosis at 37, introduced the 'zone of proximal development'?
Lev Vygotsky
Lev Vygotsky's work fell from official favour under Stalin, and a first collection of his major texts appeared only in 1956. His 'zone' is the gap between what a child can do alone and with a more knowledgeable helper.
Q 15Which British psychiatrist, brought up by a nanny and sent to boarding school at seven, pioneered attachment theory?
John Bowlby
John Bowlby later said he would not send even a dog away to boarding school at that age. He argued that a child's first bond with a caregiver shapes relationships for life.
Q 16Which psychologist devised the 'Strange Situation', the first validated method of assessing infant attachment?
Mary Ainsworth
Mary Ainsworth made her first mother-and-infant observations in villages around Kampala, Uganda. Her original Baltimore study sorted just 26 children into three attachment types.
Q 17Lawrence Kohlberg's Heinz dilemma, used to probe moral reasoning, has a husband steal what for his dying wife?
A drug
A drug newly discovered by a local chemist is what Heinz takes. Kohlberg cared less about whether a child approved of the theft than about how the child justified the answer.
Q 18Before opening her first Casa dei Bambini in Rome in 1907, Maria Montessori had qualified in which profession?
Medicine
Medicine was her second ambition: as a girl she enrolled at an all-boys technical school hoping to become an engineer. She graduated as a doctor with honours in 1896.
Q 19Which pediatrician wrote the 1946 best-seller Baby and Child Care, telling mothers they knew more than they thought?
Benjamin Spock
Benjamin Spock had already won Olympic gold, rowing in the American eight at the 1924 Paris Games. His book had sold 50 million copies by his death in 1998.
Q 20Diana Baumrind's 1960s typology of parenting named which style, balancing control with autonomy, as the ideal?
Authoritative
Authoritative parenting sets high expectations of maturity while staying centred on the child. Baumrind began with three styles; later researchers added a fourth for indifferent parents.
Babbling
Babbling is not only vocal: infants raised with a sign language do it with their hands. Cooing, the earlier stage of drawn-out vowel sounds, is on the CDC's four-month list.
Q 24Picking up a crumb between thumb and forefinger, which most babies can do by age one, is called which grasp?
Pincer
Pincer grasp replaces the earlier raking grasp, in which the fingers do all the holding without the thumb. It is what finally lets a baby pick up small finger foods.
Q 25The distress many babies start showing around unfamiliar adults at about eight months old is known by what name?
Stranger anxiety
Stranger anxiety usually peaks between six and twelve months and can return until age two. It is a normal sign that a baby now tells familiar caregivers apart from everyone else.
Q 26Linguists name toddlers' clipped two-word sentences, with no articles or conjunctions, after which kind of message?
Telegrams
Telegrams were charged by the word, so senders cut everything but the essentials. Children at the two-word stage do much the same, which is why the style is called telegraphic speech.
Q 27Which baby teeth are usually the first to break through the gums, typically between six and ten months of age?
Lower incisors
Lower incisors, the two bottom front teeth, lead the way and tend to arrive as a pair. The rest of the baby teeth then keep emerging two at a time.
Q 28In the 'rouge test' of self-awareness, a toddler is secretly dabbed with makeup on the face and then shown what?
A mirror
A mirror shows whether the child reaches for the mark on their own face rather than the reflection. In one early study, half of 18-month-olds recognised themselves.
Q 29According to CDC checklists, which crayon-and-paper skill can most children manage by the age of three?
Drawing a circle
Drawing a circle after being shown how is on the CDC's three-year list. A person with three or more body parts is expected at four, and some letters of the child's own name at five.
Q 30Which of these playground skills comes last on the CDC's checklists, expected of most children only at five?
Hopping on one foot
Hopping on one foot appears on the CDC's five-year list. Kicking a ball is expected by two, and catching a large ball most of the time by four.