PSYB20H3 Introduction to Developmental Psychology
The Complete Exam Bible · Fall 2026PSYB20H3 Overview
- University of Toronto
- Fall 2026
- Developmental Psychology
- In-person tests and final exam
- Child Development textbook with Connect
What PSYB20H3 studies
Introduction to Developmental Psychology follows the child from conception through infancy and childhood, with selected issues in adolescence, and asks how a person changes physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally with age.
- Assessed by Two in-person term tests and a cumulative three-hour final, all mixing multiple choice and short answer.
- Hardest step Classifying a short scenario by the one feature that separates two similar concepts.
- Final emphasis The final weights material not yet tested more heavily, so revise the last lectures early.
- How to prepare Pair every definition with an original scenario, then explain why the nearest alternative is wrong.
How PSYB20H3 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Textbook Connect quizzes, Chapters 1, 3, 4 and 5 | 4% | Four online chapter quizzes worth 1% each, two attempts per quiz, due 11:59 pm on Sunday, October 25 |
| Textbook Connect quizzes, later chapters (6 to 13) | 6% | Six online chapter quizzes worth 1% each, two attempts per quiz, due 11:59 pm on Tuesday, December 8 |
| Term Test #1 | 25% | In person; Weeks 1 to 4 lectures and readings; multiple choice and short answer |
| Term Test #2 | 25% | In person; Weeks 5 to 9 lectures and readings; multiple choice and short answer |
| Final Exam | 40% | In person, 3 hours, in the December 10 to 23 exam period; Weeks 1 to 12; multiple choice and short answer |
The five weighted components total 100%. Term test and final exam dates are set by the Registrar; check Quercus for the scheduled room and time.
Assessment structure
Current PSYB20H3 dates
| Date | Item | Control |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, October 19, 2026, 5 to 7 pm | Term Test #1 | In person; Weeks 1 to 4 |
| Sunday, October 25, 2026, 11:59 pm | Connect quizzes on Chapters 1, 3, 4 and 5 | No late submissions |
| Wednesday, November 25, 2026, 5 to 7 pm | Term Test #2 | In person; Weeks 5 to 9 |
| Tuesday, December 8, 2026, 11:59 pm | The six later Connect quizzes (Chapter 6 onward) | No late submissions |
| December 10 to 23, 2026 | Final exam period | Exact date set by the Registrar |
Dates are as published in the Fall 2026 PSYB20H3 syllabus and Quercus course home page. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.
What PSYB20H3 covers
Eleven chapters follow the Fall 2026 lectures from research methods and classic theories to genetics, prenatal growth, the infant brain and senses, Piaget and Vygotsky.
Defining Development and Research Methods
Define development, its goals and early philosophers, then compare measures, correlational and experimental designs, and age-change designsStart with a precise definition
The opening lecture of PSYB20H3 defines development as systematic change across the lifespan, from conception to death, that typically endures across time and contexts.
- Definition of development
- Maturation and learning
- Normative and ideographic description
- Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau
- Reliability and validity
- Correlational and experimental designs
Themes in Development and Good Theories
Classify scenarios by continuity, nature and nurture, active or passive children and holistic development, and judge theories as parsimonious, falsifiable and heuristicFour questions behind every theory
The second lecture of PSYB20H3 organises developmental psychology around four overarching themes. Continuity and discontinuity asks whether development is gradual or happens in stages.
- Continuity and discontinuity
- Absolute and positional stability
- Nature, nurture and interaction
- Active and passive children
- Holistic development
- Parsimonious, falsifiable and heuristic theories
Psychoanalytic Theories of Freud and Erikson
Place the id, ego and superego, the psychosexual stages and Erikson's psychosocial crises, and compare the two theories for short answersFreud's two structures
Sigmund Freud's psychosexual theory makes two separate claims, and PSYB20H3 tests both.
- Id, ego and superego
- Oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital stages
- Contributions and criticisms of Freud
- Erikson's eight psychosocial stages
- Trust, autonomy, initiative and industry
- Identity and ego integrity
Learning Theories and Conditioning
Separate classical conditioning, operant reinforcement and punishment, and observational learning, then weigh the learning perspectiveThree routes to learning
The learning perspectives in PSYB20H3 explain development through experience. John B.
- Watson and classical conditioning
- Little Albert
- Positive and negative reinforcement
- Positive and negative punishment
- Bandura and the Bobo doll
- Observational learning
Ethology, Ecology and Indigenous Views
Use critical and sensitive periods, Bronfenbrenner's nested systems and Indigenous holistic theories, with the strengths and criticisms of eachEthology: behaviour shaped by evolution
Ethological and evolutionary theories, as taught in PSYB20H3, emphasize the bioevolutionary basis of behaviour.
- Natural selection and adaptive behaviour
- Lorenz and imprinting
- Critical and sensitive periods
- Microsystem and mesosystem
- Exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem
- Indigenous theories of development
Heredity and Patterns of Inheritance
Trace chromosomes, mitosis, meiosis and twins, then predict phenotypes under dominant-recessive, codominant, sex-linked and polygenic inheritanceFrom conception to chromosomes
Lecture 3 of PSYB20H3 begins with heredity. Conception occurs when a sperm fertilizes an ovum, forming a zygote with 46 chromosomes, 23 from each parent.
- Chromosomes, genes and DNA
- Mitosis and meiosis
- Crossing over
- Monozygotic and dizygotic twins
- Genotype and phenotype
- Dominant, recessive and codominant alleles
Prenatal Development and Teratogens
Order the germinal, embryonic and fetal stages with monthly milestones, and explain why teratogen timing mattersThree stages with fixed boundaries
The second half of Lecture 3 in PSYB20H3 divides prenatal development into three stages, and most questions ask you to place an event in the correct one.
- Germinal stage and implantation
- Support structures
- Embryonic stage and three cell layers
- Fetal stage milestones
- Vernix and lanugo
- Age of viability
Brain Development, Reflexes and Motor Skills
Connect brain anatomy, neurons and glia, the brain growth spurt and pruning to newborn reflexes and dynamic systems motor learningBuilding the brain before and after birth
Lecture 4 of PSYB20H3 starts with the brain. The neural tube forms in the embryonic stage and becomes the brain and spinal cord, and most neurons are produced by the end of the second trimester.
- Neural tube and cerebral cortex
- Four lobes of the brain
- Cerebral lateralization
- Neurons, glia and myelin
- Brain growth spurt
- Synaptic pruning and plasticity
Infant Senses and Perception Research Methods
Compare taste, smell, touch, hearing and vision at birth, and read preference, habituation and high-amplitude sucking studiesWhat newborns can sense
The second half of Lecture 4 in PSYB20H3 surveys the senses at birth. Taste is highly developed even before birth, and by two hours of age babies distinguish sweet, sour and bitter solutions.
- Taste, smell and touch at birth
- Hearing before and after birth
- Visual acuity in the first year
- Sensation and perception
- Gibson's ecological view and affordances
- Preference technique
Piaget on Schemes and the Sensorimotor Stage
Apply schemes, assimilation, accommodation and equilibration, then order the six sensorimotor substages and object permanence evidencePiaget's question
Lecture 5 of PSYB20H3 turns to cognitive development, the changes in mental skills and abilities across life.
- Cognition and genetic epistemology
- Schemes
- Assimilation and accommodation
- Equilibrium and disequilibrium
- Four stages and their properties
- Six sensorimotor substages
Preoperational to Formal Thought and Vygotsky
Contrast preoperational limits with concrete and formal operations, and apply the zone of proximal development, scaffolding and private speechContrasting the later stages
The second half of Lecture 5 in PSYB20H3 covers Piaget's preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages and then turns to Lev Vygotsky.
- Symbolic function
- Egocentrism and the three mountain task
- Centration and conservation
- Reversibility, seriation and transitivity
- Formal operations and expertise
- Contributions and weaknesses of Piaget
The Fall 2026 offering at the University of Toronto runs its lectures in chronological order: what development is and how it is studied, the history of the field and its major theories, genetics and prenatal development, the brain, motor skills and perception, and then cognitive development through Piaget and Vygotsky.
Later lectures move to information processing, language, emotion, gender, the self and identity, and moral development. The required textbook is Santrock and colleagues' Child Development: An Introduction, Third Canadian Edition, and its Connect platform carries the chapter quizzes.
How the course is examined
Ninety percent of the grade comes from three in-person tests.
Term Test #1 examines the lectures and readings of Weeks 1 to 4, Term Test #2 covers Weeks 5 to 9, and the three-hour final exam covers Weeks 1 to 12. Every test mixes multiple choice and short answer questions.
The administrative slides add that the final carries a greater proportion of questions on material not yet tested, so the last lectures deserve full revision time even though the exam is cumulative.
What the questions reward
The weekly study guides ask students to recall information, explain concepts and apply theories to hypothetical scenarios.
In practice that means short vignettes: a parent who hands out a lollipop, a toddler who calls a dolphin a fish, a researcher who tests three age groups once. Marks go to the student who can name the concept, justify the classification with the defining feature and reject the near miss.
The chapters in this guide are organised around exactly that move, with original practice items in the multiple-choice and short-answer formats the course uses.
Worked example · free
Predict offspring traits from two heterozygous parents
- 1Write each parent's gametes: D or d from the mother, D or d from the father.
- 1Fill the four Punnett cells: DD, Dd, Dd and dd.
- 1Only the dd cell lacks a dominant allele, so 1 of 4 cells, or 25%, shows no dimples.
- 1The two Dd cells carry d but show dimples, so 2 of 4 cells, or 50%, are carriers with dimples.
Key terms
- Development
- Development is systematic change from conception until death that typically lasts across time and holds across contexts.
- Normative Development
- Normative development describes the typical pattern and timing of change shared by most children of a given age.
- Ideographic Development
- Ideographic development describes how an individual child differs from the typical pattern.
- Random Assignment
- Random assignment places participants into experimental conditions without bias, so that group differences can be attributed to the manipulated variable.
- Sequential Design
- A sequential design studies several age groups and follows each of them across more than one testing year.
- Operant Conditioning
- Operant conditioning is learning in which a behaviour becomes more or less likely because of the consequence that follows it.
- Critical Period
- A critical period is a limited window in which a specific experience must occur for normal development of a capacity.
- Genotype
- Genotype refers to the genes a person inherits, as distinct from the phenotype through which those genes are expressed.
- Teratogen
- A teratogen is an environmental agent, such as a virus, drug, chemical or radiation, that can harm a developing embryo or fetus.
- Synaptic Pruning
- Synaptic pruning removes rarely stimulated neurons and connections, so that experience shapes which pathways remain.
- Habituation
- Habituation is the decline in attention to a stimulus that has been experienced repeatedly.
- Accommodation
- Accommodation modifies an existing scheme so that a new experience that does not fit can be interpreted.
- Zone of Proximal Development
- The zone of proximal development is the range of tasks a child cannot yet complete alone but can complete with guidance from a more skilled partner.
PSYB20H3 FAQ
What is the format of the final exam?
The final exam is held in person during the December examination period, lasts three hours and contains multiple choice and short answer questions. It examines the lectures and readings of Weeks 1 to 12 and is worth 40% of the course grade. Bring a pen, a pencil, an eraser and student ID, and check Quercus for the scheduled room and time.
How much are the term tests worth and what do they cover?
Each term test is worth 25%. Term Test #1 examines Weeks 1 to 4 of lectures and readings, and Term Test #2 covers Weeks 5 to 9. Both are written in person and combine multiple choice with short answer questions, so practise both quick recognition and written explanation for every lecture.
How do the Connect quizzes count toward the grade?
Ten Connect chapter quizzes are worth 1% each. The quizzes on Chapters 1, 3, 4 and 5 close at 11:59 pm on Sunday, October 25, and the remaining six close at 11:59 pm on Tuesday, December 8. Each quiz allows two attempts, and late submissions are not accepted.
Is the final exam weighted toward the last lectures?
The administrative slides state that more of the final's questions will come from material not yet examined, meaning the weeks after Term Test #2. Plan revision so that the final lectures receive dedicated practice, then use mixed sets that also revisit research methods, theories, genetics and Piaget.
What kind of short answer question should I expect?
Review sessions model short answers worth a few points each, such as stating two similarities and two differences between Freud and Erikson, or naming and illustrating each operant conditioning procedure. Each point usually rewards one accurate term paired with one correct example or explanation, so write in complete, specific sentences.
Which developmental research designs are most often confused?
Students mix up cross-sectional, longitudinal and sequential designs. A cross-sectional study tests different age groups once, a longitudinal study follows the same people across years, and a sequential study follows several age groups across several testing years. Decide by asking who is tested and how many times.
How should I study Piaget for the tests?
Learn the four stages with their approximate ages, then contrast neighbouring stages: what can a concrete operational child do that a preoperational child cannot? Tie each limitation, such as centration or egocentrism, to the task that reveals it, such as conservation or the three mountain task.
Questions students ask in each PSYB20H3 chapter
- How is development defined in this course?
- Development is the set of systematic changes across the lifespan, from conception to death, that typically last across time and settings. The definition excludes brief or random changes, such as a single bad day, and includes lasting shifts in physical, cognitive and social functioning that a researcher could observe again later. Chapter 01 · Defining Development and Research Methods
- What are the four overarching themes in developmental psychology?
- The course names continuity and discontinuity, nature and nurture, active versus passive children, and the holistic nature of development. Each theme poses a question about how development works, and every major theory in the course can be placed on each one, which makes the themes a useful frame for comparison questions. Chapter 02 · Themes in Development and Good Theories
- When do the id, ego and superego develop?
- The id is present at birth and holds unconscious, innate drives. The ego, which is conscious and rational, develops by about one year of age. The superego, the moral compass, develops between three and six. Exam options often shift these ages by a stage, so learn each component with its age. Chapter 03 · Psychoanalytic Theories of Freud and Erikson
- What is the difference between negative reinforcement and punishment?
- Negative reinforcement removes something unpleasant and the behaviour increases, as when shutting a window to block noise becomes a daily habit. Punishment always decreases a behaviour, whether by adding something unpleasant or removing something pleasant. Check what happens to the behaviour first, because that decides reinforcement or punishment. Chapter 04 · Learning Theories and Conditioning
- What is the difference between a critical period and a sensitive period?
- A critical period is a limited window in which a specific experience must occur for normal development, as with Lorenz's imprinting ducks. A sensitive period is a time when development is most easily shaped but can still occur later. The course asks whether these concepts are too rigid for human development. Chapter 05 · Ethology, Ecology and Indigenous Views
- How many chromosomes does a typical sperm or egg carry?
- A typical sperm or ovum carries 23 chromosomes, half the usual number. At conception the two combine to give the zygote 46 chromosomes, 23 from each parent. A fertility result reporting 23 chromosomes in sperm therefore describes a typical male, a point the lecture tests directly. Chapter 06 · Heredity and Patterns of Inheritance
- What are the three stages of prenatal development?
- The germinal stage runs from conception to implantation, roughly weeks zero to two. The embryonic stage runs from week three to week eight and is when the major organs form. The fetal stage runs from week nine to birth, when organ systems begin to function and the fetus grows rapidly. Chapter 07 · Prenatal Development and Teratogens
- What happens during the brain growth spurt?
- Between about seven months of gestation and two years of age, brain weight rises from 25% to 75% of adult weight. The growth comes from myelination, the branching of dendrites called arborization, and synaptogenesis, the formation of synaptic connections, while pruning removes rarely used connections. Chapter 08 · Brain Development, Reflexes and Motor Skills
- Which sense is least developed at birth?
- Vision is the least mature sense in newborns. Visual acuity is about 20/240 at birth, improves to about 20/40 by six months and reaches adult level by twelve months. Hearing, by contrast, already works in the last two months of pregnancy and is more developed than vision at birth. Chapter 09 · Infant Senses and Perception Research Methods
- What is the difference between assimilation and accommodation?
- Assimilation interprets a new experience using an existing scheme, as when a toddler calls a dolphin a fish. Accommodation modifies an existing scheme so that a new experience can be interpreted, as when the child learns that some animals that swim are not fish. Both are forms of adaptation in Piaget's theory. Chapter 10 · Piaget on Schemes and the Sensorimotor Stage
- Why do preoperational children fail conservation tasks?
- They centre on one dimension, such as the height of a glass or the length of a row, and lack reversible mental operations. Concrete operational children succeed because they can decentre and mentally reverse the change, recognising that nothing was added or removed when the liquid was poured or the row was spread out. Chapter 11 · Preoperational to Formal Thought and Vygotsky
How to study for the exam
Work lecture by lecture in the order the term tests use. For each lecture, write the learning outcomes from memory, then answer them in two forms: a one-line definition and a short scenario that the definition classifies. Concept checks in this course are almost always vignettes, so build a habit of naming the deciding feature before choosing an answer.
For a design question, ask who is tested and how often; for a conditioning question, ask whether something is added or removed and whether the behaviour rises or falls; for a Piaget question, ask which operation the child lacks. Keep an error log sorted by confusion pair, such as reliability and validity, mitosis and meiosis, or assimilation and accommodation, and retest those pairs after a delay.
Write at least one timed short answer per week using the point-per-idea structure from the review sessions. In the final weeks, mix chapters and leave dedicated time for the lectures after Term Test #2.
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