Exam 1 Study Guide For Chapter 1 PDF

Chapter 1: Goals, Theories, and Methods Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative changes in development. QUANTITATIVE: Gradual changes in the amount, frequency, or degree of behaviors (like coral reef sh or trees) Ex. The amount of steps a infant/toddler takes in a row, t...

Chapter 1: Goals, Theories, and Methods Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative changes in development. QUANTITATIVE: Gradual changes in the amount, frequency, or degree of behaviors (like coral reef sh or trees) Ex. The amount of steps a infant/toddler takes in a row, the frequency/rate the infant/toddler cries at night QUALITATIVE: A progression through a sequence of distinct changes in thoughts and actions (like frogs or butter ies) Ex. Simple parallel play to complex cooperative play, concrete operational thought to more abstract reasoning List three ways that children differ in their course of development. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES - The spread or variability among children in different areas of development AGE ONSETS - The approximate age when skills emerge Examples: First words, rst steps, rst signs of puberty RATE OF CHANGE - The course of change over time Ex. Some children show fast growth in the number of words in their vocabularies, whereas other children show slower development THE FORM OF SKILLS - What behaviors look like in children with diverse experiences Ex. In terms of counting, although people assume this skill to be universal, the Pirahã people appear to lack number concepts Explain and contrast developmental stability and developmental plasticity. STABILITY - Whether children who are relatively low or high on a certain characteristic or behavior at a particular point in time are also relatively low or high at other times or in other words… the measure of behavior/development stays at consistent level over time in comparison to peers Ex. Infants with problems in emotional regulation tend to have challenges regulating later on PLASTICITY - The impressive capacity of humans to adapt to changing environments and experiences Ex. A collection of 300 adoption studies illustrates that children who were born in impoverished environments caught up to their peers who did not grow up in impoverished environments Understand the main arguments that characterize the nature-nurture debate in developmental psychology. NATURE - Emphasizes a child’s biological endowment, or the genes inherited from parents Ex. Biological characteristics such as two arms and eyes; physical appearance; personality, temperament. NURTURE - Emphasizes that the range of environmental contexts and experiences that in uence development beginning with fetal development Ex. Family; childcare; school; neighborhood; culture; and so forth De ne a developmental cascade and discuss how cascading in uences can be seen across domains and across developmental time. DEVELOPMENTAL DOMAINS - An area of development such as motor; perceptual; cognitive; language; social; and emotional DEVELOPMENTAL CASCADES - the idea that changes of one kind can have cascading effects, setting other kinds of changes in motion, both immediately and at later ages. Developmental cascades can be positive or negative and typically exert spillover effects across different areas of development. Developmental cascades can be seen within time and across domains as well as across time. WITHIN TIME (NEGATIVE, ACROSS DOMAINS) - Lack of vocabulary/language leads to screams of frustration (emotional regulation) WITHIN TIME (POSITIVE, ACROSS DOMAINS) - Improved vocabulary/language leads to increased positive socialization with peers, which leads to improved social skills. fi ­ WITHIN TIME (BETWEEN DEVELOPING CHILD AND ENVIRONMENT): Infant learning to crawl/walk, leads to exploring/able to reach new things within environment. These discoveries may lead to new reprimands from parents, leading to understanding of “no” and other vocabulary. This shows the cascading effect from locomotion to enviornmental exploration to language exposure to learning words. OVER TIME (NEGATIVE) - Children who experience low-quality parenting in early childhood (including neglect or harsh punishment such as hitting) are at heightened risk for later academic and social problems at school and for associating with peers who encourage and reinforce antisocial behavior OVER TIME (POSITIVE) - Children who start learning to read at an earlier age than normal are more likely to gain better vocabulary, perceptual, and cognitive development, which leads to higher achievement academically in school. Know the theories that have driven research in child development. FOUNDATIONAL THEORIES EVOLUTIONARY THEORY (DARWIN): recognizes the importance of learned behaviors but consider learned behaviors to be the product of innate biological tendencies that serve human survival. ○ Building off Charles Darwin’s writings about species survival. (individuals with physical and behavioral traits that are well suited to their environments have an increased chance of surviving and reproducing. These adaptive traits are selected to be passed on to subsequent generations in what is referred to as natural selection. The well-known phrase survival of the ttest asserts that the odds of survival are greater for better- adapted individuals, who will pass on advantageous traits to future generations) ○ In child development, theorists try to understand and explain why infants cry and cling to caregivers, teens seek excitement and take risks around the time of puberty, etc. Speci cally, children attempt to adapt to their unique circumstances, which is why different environments produce different behaviors in children, or modi es universal, biological tendencies. ○ Ex. Infants everywhere form attachments to their primary caregivers, a survival-related adaptation, and engage in behaviors that signal their connection to loved ones. Attachment-related behaviors are seen when an infant crawls over to mom or dad or gets upset if a caregiver leaves the home. But individual infants develop different attachment styles based on the type of caregiving they receive. For example, infants whose parents are unable to care for them adequately—maybe because of a scarcity of food or the caregiver being under enormous stress—may increase their clinginess to obtain whatever meager attention or resources are available to them. PSYCHODYNAMIC THEORY (FREUD AND ERIKSON): focuses on the development of personality, which is viewed as a product of conscious and unconscious forces, with individuals progressing through a series of stages as they attempt to resolve certain con icts. ○ Freud’s Psychosexual Stage Theory considers the goals of survival and reproduction to be the main catalysts for behavior and development. Children are seen as progressing through ve stages as they learn to satisfy survival and reproduction (sex) drives in ways that are socially and psychologically acceptable. Also focuses on the tensions that people experience among three parts of their personality. ◆ Oral stage - during the rst few years of life, infant focuses on pleasurable sensations of the mouth, obtained by sucking and biting ◆ Anal stage - during the second year, focus is on pleasurable sensations of the anus, obtained through elimination ◆ Phallic stage - from around 3-6 years, pleasure and problems are centered on the genital area (boy’s awareness of having a penis and girls awareness of not having one); sexual interest is directed towards the opposite sex parent. fi fl fi fi fi  ◆ Latency stage - From around 7 years old through puberty, children focus on developing skills that are valued by adults of their culture, and sexual urges submerged. ◆ Genital stage - adolescents seek to satisfy their adult sexual desires. ◆ The ID - the primitive biological drives that are present from birth, seeks to ful ll immediate desire. ◆ The ego - The rational component of personality, begins to emerge in early childhood and helps keep inappropriate thoughts, impulses, and desires from rising to consciousness and being acted upon. ◆ The superego - a conscience to ensure that children behave in morally acceptable ways and uphold family and community standards and expectations, imposes demands of external world ◆ These three parts con ict with each other. children’s attempts to resolve these unpleasant internal con icts propel development forward. ○ Erikson’s Psychosocial Stage Theory focuses on the con icts that individuals encounter as they struggle to answer the question “Who am I?” Individuals pass through eight stages, in each of which they experience a con ict about their identity. If they resolve the con ict positively, they can move on to the next stage; otherwise, their personality will be negatively affected. How well a person deals with each of the psychosocial crises gradually comes to shape that person’s personality. ◆ Infant (0-18 months) - Trust vs. Mistrust - learn to either trust or mistrust the people who tend to their basic needs. ◆ Toddler (18 months - 3 years) - Autonomy vs shame and doubt - learn to be autonomous and in control or feel shame because they doubt their abilities to do things by themselves. ◆ Pre-schooler (3-5 years) - Initiative vs. Guilt - learn to take initiative to achieve their goals; if children’s re prevented from asking initiative, they experience guilt over the failure of their efforts to become independent. ◆ Grade schooler (5-12 years) - Industry vs Inferiority - learn to be effective and capable in the activities that are values by members of their community, or they experience sense of inferiority. ◆ Teenager (12-18 years) - Identity vs. Role Confusion - establish a sense of personal identity, or they become confused about who they are and what they want to do in life. ◆ Young adult (18-40 years) - Intimacy vs. Isolation - form close and committed relationships with others, or they risk loneliness and isolation ◆ Middle-age adult (40-65 years) - Generativity vs. Stagnation - experience a sense of productivity in their lives and work and are willing to contribute to the next generation, or they experience a ease of stagnation. ◆ Older adult (65+ years) - Integrity vs. Despair - Older adults are able to look back on their past and see a life that has been meaningful, or they feel despair over missed opportunities. BEHAVIORISM (WATSON AND SKINNER): studies observable behaviors, ways to predict those behaviors, and how people learn new behaviors based on their experiences. views learning as a change in observable behaviors as a result of environmental in uences, thus placing full weight on the nurture end of the nature-nurture continuum. Believes that behavior can be conditioned. ○ Watson’s Classical Conditioning - demonstrated that he could instill extreme fear in an calm baby “Little Albert” ◆ a neutral stimulus takes a new signi cance after being paired with meaningful experiences ◆ Ex. Rat (neutral stimulus) paired with hammer banging metal (unconditioned stimulus) initially causes natural re ex to the loud noise, which causes baby to cry/fear (unconditioned response). After conditioning (multiple repetition of event), the baby started reacting with crying/fear to the rat alone, in the absence of the noise. This pairs the rat to the loud noise, making the rat a conditioned stimulus and loud noise from the hammer a conditioned response or re ex. fl fl fl fl fi fl fl fl  ○ Skinner’s Operant Conditioning - refers to a situation in which the forms and frequencies of behaviors depend on how behaviors are rewarded or punished; versions of operant conditioning are applied to studies of infant learning and memory. Behaviors increase or decrease depending on whether they are rewarded or punished. ◆ Positive Reinforcement - when something pleasant is rewarded/added in response to behavior ◇ behavior to be increased could be doing a page of math homework, reinforcement is one chocolate bar. ◆ Negative Reinforcement - when something unpleasant is removed in response to a behavior ◇ behavior to be increased could be getting up early in the morning, reinforcement is alarm being turned off ◆ Positive Punishment - when something unpleasant is added in response to a behavior ◇ behavior to be increased is to turn in homework on time, punishment is do all the chores for a week ◆ Negative Punishment - when something pleasant is removed in response to a behavior ◇ behavior to be increased is to nish everything on plate at dinner time, punishment is no TV for a week CONSTRUCTIVISM (PIAGET) ○ Underscores children’s active role in learning and development, cares about what goes on in a child’s mind. The originator of constructivism, Piaget believes that it is nearly impossible to explain why children might respond in entirely different ways to identical situations, without considering how children think. He believes that children actively construct knowledge as they engage with their environments, and their maturing brains and bodies place constraints on how they think and what they can do. He viewed the interaction between nature, the developing brain/body, and nurture, a child’s everyday experiences, as jointly explaining development. ○ He stated that children progress through four qualitatively distinct, universal, and invariant stages. At each stage, children have schemas that provide them with a way of organizing information and understanding and acting on their environments. These stages cuts across different problems and situations. Children move through the stages by the processes of assimilation, disequilibrium, and accommodation, without skipping stages or regressing to earlier ones. However, children on the cusp of a more advanced stage display thinking that bounces between the less and more advanced stage. ◆ Stage 1 (Sensorimoter period) - Infants’ schemas - cognitive structures that organize information and guide understanding of and actions in the world, which are limited to sensory experiences and motor actions. ◆ Stage 2 (Preoperational period) - Children are capable of mental representation or the internalization of thought, as seen in the growth of language, symbolic play, deferred imitation, and understanding of object permanence. ◆ Stage 3 (Concrete operational period) - Children develop logical, exible, organized, and rational thinking; however, their thinking is limited to concrete experiences. ◆ Stage 4 (Formal operational period) - Children are capable of abstract and hypothetical thinking, in which logical reasoning and problem solving more beyond concrete information and experiences. ◆ Assimilation - refers to the incorporation of new experiences into an existing schema. Assimilating new experiences that t with an existing schema can strengthen the schema. Creating a rationale for new experience. ◆ Equilibration - where there is a cognitive balance or alignment between new information and existing knowledge. ◇ Ex. of Assimilation and Equilibration - Child 1 goes to school and sees that only girls play with dolls and only boys play with cars, if child 1 has the schema about gender that boys never play with dolls, then assimilating this new experience strengthens her schema further. She experiences equilibration. fi fi fl  ◆ Disequilibrium - When new experiences do not t a schema, an imbalance between the schema and reality ◆ Accommodation - a result of disequilibrium, or children’s modi cation of a schema to t reality. ◇ Ex. of Disequilibrium and Accommodation - Child 1 hears two boys ask to play with dolls, which doesn’t t child 1’s schema about gender, causing her to experience disequilibrium. Child 1 might attempt to assimilate the experience by reasoning that boys didn’t actually want to play with dolls and classmates were just being nice. However, child 1 might resolve the disequilibrium through accommodation by modifying her schema to include the more complex idea that some boys play with dolls or that boys sometimes play with dolls. ○ SOCIO-CULTURAL THEORY (VYGOTSKY): Focuses on the social and cultural contexts of child development, particularly how social partners in uence children’s learning and how culture infuses everyday experiences and children’s interactions with people, objects, and spaces of their environments. Sociocultural theorists, originating with the writings of Vygotsky, advance the concepts of a cultural learning. ◆ Vygostsky emphasized that children learn through interacting with knowledgeable adults, such as parents and teachers, and in doing so master more challenging tasks than they would when acting alone. Children learn best when caregivers adjust their input to be slightly above the child’s current or “actual” level of understanding. A child’s zone of proximal development refers to the distance between what a child can achieve independently versus with the support of a social partner. Information that falls within the zone of proximal development supports learning; whereas, information that is too easy or too hard relative to a child’s current understanding yields few if any bene ts. ◇ Ex. A preschooler may be able to count aloud by reciting numbers, but still nd it dif cult to count the crayons in a box. If a teacher simply states aloud the numbers it may not help the child helps count higher or if the teacher helps count a loud a box of crayons with 60 inside it will be too dif cult. However, if the teacher guides the child to count a set of 10 crayons one by one, gesturing to each crayon while reciting its number, the child will begin to understand that counting objects means connecting numbers to a speci c set of objects. ○ NATIVIST APPROACH (SPELKE) ◆ Has aspects of evolutionary theories, Asserts that people are born with innate, or core, capacities that are essential for human adaptation. ◇ Ex. Children acquire the rules for grammar with impressive speed because a device or module in the brain is specialized for language. ◇ Ex. A core “number sense” that paves the way to later mathematical understanding ○ SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY (BANDURA) ◆ Extends the principles of operant conditioning to the study of how children learn the social behaviors that society expects of them, including through observational learning and vicarious reinforcement. Similar to the principles of behaviorism regarding learning through reinforcements. Considered how child’s cognition and cognitive development affect who they imitate, when, and why. ◆ Observational learning: children learn by simply watching other people, don’t need to be rewarded or punished to gure out how to act ◇ Takes the form of vicarious reinforcement: children learn to behave by watching others get rewarded or punished. ◆ Ex. of Observational Learning - child watching an adult aggressively hit and verbally assault an in ated “Bobo doll”, while another child watches an adult play with other toys non-aggressively. The child who watched the aggressive adult was more likely to act physically aggressive toward the Bobo doll than those fi fi fi fl fi fi fi  ◆ Ex. of Vicarious Reinforcement - a child sees a teacher scolding a classmate for talking in class might remain quiet despite not having been punished her/himself. ○ INFORMATION PROCESSING THEORIES (KALI) ◆ Focuses on the executive functioning of children, including attention to sensory input, thinking or processing information, and response or information outpost. ◇ Sensory information input - vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell ◇ Processing - manipulating information, storing information in memory, retrieving relevant information from memory. ◇ Information output - speaking, writing, social interaction ◆ Similar to a computer that manipulates and stores information, children perceive, manipulate, store memory, and retrieve incoming sensory information (such as sounds, sights, and smells). ◇ the mind’s “hardware” (brain structures and neural connections and “software (rules and strategies for dealing with information). ◇ Involves a sensory register, short-term memory, and long-term memory ◇ Ex. Child watching an unfamiliar animal while visiting a zoo. Child’s father points to the animal and says, “giraffe”. The child musta tend to and integrate incoming sensory information - the sound of the word “giraffe” and the visual image of the giraffe - to learn its name. ◆ Gained prominence to test components of the model in children of different ages, to study improvement over age on faster information processing, attention, problem solving, and member. ○ DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEMS THEORISTS (SMITH AND THELEN) ◆ VIews human behavior as the product of a complex, ever-changing system, where developmental changes occur in response to many different kinds of factors. New behaviors emerge out of complex interactions between children’s bodies and actions in the environment. Recognizes that many intersecting forces or systems - including strength, brain development, motivation, social inputs, environmental layouts, and so forth - spur development and affect children’s behaviors at any point in time. Children might therefore differentiate in how they act and think at any point of time, depending on environmental circumstance and supports. ◆ Ex. An infant learning to walk requires complex forces to arise. For instance, infant must have the motivation to walk and abandon their fairly effective means of crawling. Also, their body dimensions must change from the top-heavy shape of young infants to be an elongated, cylindrical shape., and there must be suf cient muscle strength and postural control to life their legs off the ground, support their bodies, and maintain balance on one leg while the other leg is in motion. Cultural values around walking also motivates movements through exercise and other forms of stimulation. ◆ Doesn’t believe that developmental change is a product of top-down process, Rejects the idea of innate, core capacities. ○ BIOECOLOGICAL THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT (BRONFENBRENNER): Focuses on the way the environment affects human development, where environment includes factors internal and external to the child, such as each child’s psychological and behavioral characteristics and socio-cultural contexts. Believes that children play an active role in developed and reciprocal in uences among children’ s biology, behaviors, and the multiple environments in which they develop. Children in uence their environments just as their environments in uence them. ◆ Ex. Children may increase their negative behaviors over time in response to unsupportive, abusive, or neglectful parenting. The growing negativityy will then lead to more negative parenting, and possibly feed into a downward spiral of poor social interaction with others. fi fl fl fl  ◆ Bronfenbrenner advanced a comprehensive theory that conceptualized development as nested within ve systems along with a biological dimension. Biological characteristics start at the center, with the surrounding systems working together guided by the child’s characteristics. ◇ Biology - The personal characteristics of individuals that affect their social interactions and experiences, including physical attributes such as age, sex, and appearance; unobservable characteristics, such as intelligence; and aspects of personality, including temperament, motivation, and persistence. ◇ Microsystem- An immediate, or proximal, environment in which individuals interact directly. The most widely studied microsystems include family/home, school, peer groups, and neighborhood. ◇ Mesosystem - The connections among two or more microsystems, such as family/home and school. For instance, if a child’s parents expect the child to be respectful and obedient and to speak to adults only when spoken to, the child might have dif culties in a classroom where teachers expect active participation. ◇ Exosystem- The environments in which the child does not participate, but that affect the child through their in uences on one or more microsystems. Exosystems might include parent work environments and healthcare systems. For example, if a child’s parent works long hours at a stressful job, she might be short-tempered and less responsive in the family/home microsystem. ◇ Macrosystem - A culture’s broad system of beliefs, values, resources, and institutions, including economic and governmental institutions, which can affect one or more microsystems. The macrosystem can be viewed as a cultural blueprint that in uences the ways that children are raised. For example, cultural communities differ in views around gender equality, which may affect how boys and girls are treated at home and school. ◇ Chronosystem - Changes in the life events that affect development across the lifespan and historical time. An example of a changing life event would be a parent’s death, which will affect children differently at different periods during their lifespan. Events such as the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II (1939–1945) represent historical events that affected child Understand the components of culture and how culture affects children’s experiences and development. Culture refers to the shared physical, behavioral, and symbolic features of a community. PHYSICAL - materials and the use of space. Cultural community share the physical features of daily living, including how space is used and the material objects available to members of the community. Ex. Chopsticks vs. forks/spoons for eating, books/puzzles vs. toys made from natural materials, different symbolic tools like maps, art, diagrams, and charts, mats vs. chairs for sitting, determines how and when children behave a certain way. BEHAVIORAL - cultural practices and routines. Members of a cultural community share practices, or ways of doing things, including how they structure their days. Ex. Children in some communities spend most of their day in school, whereas children in other communities spend their day in the elds helping parents harvest food. Hand gestures, talking over/interrupting vs. waiting turn, and expressing emotion amboyantly vs. restrained SYMBOLIC - cultural beliefs and views. Cultural community share views and ways of thinking - including attitudes, beliefs, values and expectations. Ex. Views about proper ways to raise children and the behaviors expected from their children. independence/ assertiveness vs. humility/defernce to authority/respect for elders/supporting elderly parent fl fi fl fi fl  Components of culture are intertwined - physical settings and caregiver views affect customs of child-rearing, just as child-rearing customs reciprocally affect views and how caregivers arrange physical materials and space. Ex. Parents in cultures that endorse the importance of literacy will showcase books throughout th house and engage in book reading at early ages. As children learn to read, they reinforce parent’s views about the importance of literacy. Culture shapes how, when, and from whom children learn the skills of their community so that they can become valued contributors to the community. UNIVERSAL ASPECTS OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT ◆ children everywhere are recipients and agents of change in their cultures. They not only internalize shared views and practices but also change those views and practices as they participate in social interactions ◆ Humans in all cultures perform the universal tasks of constituting families, raising children, and passing on the norms, values, skills, knowledge, and dispositions that will enable children to survive and thrive ◆ Humans have a shared biology and evolutionary history that provide nearly all children with capacities to adapt to their environment Understand the steps involved in the scienti c method for hypothesis-driven research, compare and contrast with discovery-based science HYPOTHESIS-DRIVEN RESEARCH - seeks to examine a speci c and measurable question along with speci ed hypothesis. Test whether suf cient evidence exists to support the starting hypothesis. Uses the scienti c method. Identifying a question - Topic for research and experimentation or question that a researcher seeks to answer Formulating a hypothesis that answers the question - A proposed explanation to explain the phenomenon or predict the outcome Designing a study - Develop a study to test the hypothesis Analyzing the results of the study and drawing conclusions - Examine whether the obtained data or result support the hypotheses. Findings may support the hypothesis, indicate that the hypothesis is incorrect, or fall somewhere in between. DISCOVERY-BASED SCIENCE - aims to discover and understand what children do and what development looks like without any presuppositions about what might be found. Learn from what the data reveal in an effort to advance a fuller understanding of development than was previously possible. Guided by one or more questions, but no speci c hypotheses. Understand the decisions involved in determining the participants or sample to be included in a research study. SAMPLE - the number of people who participate in a study (sample size), and most centrally, the characteristics of participants. GENERALIZABILITY - the degree to which research ndings and conclusions based on a speci c study and sample extend to the population at large. The general rule of thumb is that the larger a study sample, the greater the chance that ndings are generalizable. However, sample size alone does not guarantee generalizability. A sample that includes people from a range of backgrounds and locations is preferable to one based on a narrow group of participants. CONVENIENCE SAMPLING - recruiting participants into a study based on how easy it is to get them, such as students in professors class or local community. May create bias ndings, because the sample might not be representative. Con dence in study ndings and generalizability largely depends on the population being studied and factors of interest or variables. fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi Compare and contrast the various approaches or methods developmental scientists use to gather data Research method refers to how data are gathered. The choice of which methods to use depends on the question under study, the researcher’s theoretical orientation, the age of participants,and even resources available to conduct the study. INTERVIEWS Structured interview - asks speci c, close-ended questions. Ex. Asking an adolescent about speci c risk behaviors Unstructured interview - asks open-ended questions to elicit more information form participants. Falls under the broad umbrella of qualitative research. Ex. Understanding adolescents’ perspectives about risk taking, including rationale. Bene ts - Yields data from the perspective of participants on their behaviors, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and so on. Also allows researchers to gather information on infrequent behaviors or events that are unlikely to be observed in a single study session. Drawbacks - Participants can be biased in their reporting, and prone to social desirability or answering in ways that they assume researchers expect. Participants may selectively disclose only certain information to hide negative behaviors or feelings. WRITTEN SURVEYS Paper or online Bene ts - Participants can respond without speaking directly to a researcher, which may minimize social desirability effects. Drawbacks - Literacy demands may be a concern, which makes surveys inappropriate for young children and individuals with low education. OBSERVATIONS - observations to study developmental phenomena, by watching what children do in a controlled laboratory setting or in natural settings such as home or school. Naturalistic observation - observe participants in everyday settings, such as at home, school, or on playgrounds. Researchers attempt to remain unobtrusive by remaining at a distance and not interacting with participants. Ex. interested in developmental changes in child peer friendships might observe children of different ages during lunch breaks or recess. Ex. might observe classrooms to compare how teachers talk to boys versus girls in a study of gender stereotypes. Structured observation researchers observe participants performing a speci c activity—Ex., interacting with peers during a game, or viewing images on screen, typically in a laboratory setting. Direct assessment - test children on a speci c task or test. Ex. might assess children’s vocabulary by pointing to pictures in a test booklet and asking children to name the pictures. Ex. assess children’s spatial skills by asking children to nest shapes in shape sorters. Ex. assess moral reasoning by asking children how they would respond to a dilemma, such as if a friend stole items from a store. Bene ts - Allows researchers to directly observe or assess behaviors of interest, oftentimes in ecologically valid naturalistic contexts such as at a child’s home or school. Drawbacks - Can be costly time wise, and may require later coding of behaviors from videorecordings. Participant behavior may be affected by a researcher’s presence. PHYSIOLOGICAL ASSESSMENTS Measurements of the fucntioning of different parts of body including brain activation, heart rate, blood pressure, eye movements, hormone levels, etc. Bene ts - Can assess how participants react and respond to stimuli and different situations physiologically, offering a unique lens into the unobservable aspects of learning and development. fi fi fi fi fi fi  Drawbacks - Many such techniques can be costly in the required technology and training. Some methods cannot be used with young children. Behavioral measures may be needed to interpret the meaning of physiological data, which can be noisy and affected by time of day (such as in hormone measurement) and other factors that cause loss of data and messiness of data. Compare and contrast the bene ts and limitations of the different study designs used in developmental science. CORRELATIONAL STUDIES Tests associations between two or more variables, but without manipulating any of the variables Range from 1.00 (strongest positive correlation) to -1.00 (strongest negative correlation) Direction-of-causation-problem: correlation between two variables does not indicate which, if either, variable is the cause of the other. Third variable problem: Correlation between two variables (the independent and dependent variables) may be because both are in uenced by some third variable or confounding variable, which explains the association between the two variables Ex. Lower socioeconomic class is correlated to lower grades in school, but lower socioeconomic class does not cause lower grades. Rather those of lower socioeconomic class have more homework help, which leads to lower grades. Bene ts - Researchers can capitalize on naturally occurring situations or behaviors, without manipulating variables. Drawbacks - Limited ability to disentangle cause-and-effect associations EXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS Designed to directly test a hypothesis about a cause-effect relation between two (or more) variables, one or more independent variables and one or more dependent variables. Indepednent variable is manipulated to see whether changes follow the dependent variable. Participants are divided into an experiemntal group, those who receive the “treatment”, the experimental manipulation, and those who do not receive treatment, the control group. Random assignment: use of chance procedures, such as ipping a coin or using a random-number table to assign participants to treatment or control, to ensure every person in the study has the same opportunity to be assigned to one or the other group. Helps ensure an even distribution of confounding variables between the groups. LONGITUDINAL STUDIES Follow the same participants over time, typically across months or years Bene ts - Allows researchers to test stability, consistency over time in the ordering of individuals on a particular measure, and prediction over developmental time. Able to test developmental cascades overtime. Also, allows to investigate whether a variable at one point in time relates to a variable at another point of time due to an association with an intervening, explanatory variable called a mediator. Drawbacks - Costly time-wise, as researchers must follow the same children over time; can suffer from attrition as participants drop out of the study. The study may no longer include a suf cient number of participants, from a speci c background or not, to test the hypothesis Repeated assessments of the same children are required to investigate whether and how skills (experiences) at one point in time affect the same or different skills or experiences at later times. Ex. Children’s ability to regulate their emotions and behaviors in early childhood has cascading effects on school performance in childhood and then delinquency in adolescence must follow the same children over several years. Ex. Including mediator, child aggressiveness (the mediator) might explain the connection between toddlers who experienced high levels of harsh parental discipline are more likely to experience peer rejection in childhood. fi fi fi fl fi fl fi CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDIES Compares children of different ages at roughly the same point of time Sometimes, researchers test children of a single age to inquire into children’s skills at that speci c time in development. Ex. Comparing children of same age who have who differ in a certain ability/skill within their development. For instance, 2 year olds who are able to walk vs those who still crawl too interact with caregivers. Bene ts - Less costly than longitudinal studies time and money wise, while enabling the investigation into age- related differences in a particular phenomenon. Attrition is no longer a problem. Drawbacks - Do not permit a test of stability or prediction Ex. comparing 3,5,7 yearolds on how long they are able to wait for a desired reward, such as food, to study changes in children’s self-regulation skills. Ex. Comparing 4, 7, 10 yearolds on how often they get show sings of distraction during a 1 hour class lecture, to study attention/boredom. COHORT-SEQUENTIAL STUDIES Follows two or more groups of children of different ages over time, thus providing a mix of longitudinal and cross- sectional designs. Children of different ages are compared on a given behavior or characteristic over a short period. Ex. testing if children’s ability to lie changes in sophistication as they get older. Groups of 2, 3, and 4 yearolds at the start of the study, which allows for age-based comparisons in the cross-sectional nature of the study. Then study each group of chdlren for 2 additional years, allowing for the longitudinal analyses which each group of children. Bene ts - Allows for testing of stabity and prediction in subsets of children, but takes less time to cover a wide age space than would longitudinal designs. Drawbacks - Still require more time than a cross-sectional study that would see participants only once, and there is a risk once more a participant attrition. MICRO-GENTIC STUDIES Involve frequent, closely spaced observations of children and/or detailed observations of learning in real time. Data-sense approach that yield rich descriptive information about the process of change, but generally include fewer children than would be seen in cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. When designing microgenetic studies, researchers must decide how frequently to sample children’s behavior to accurately chart the developmental trajectory of a speci c skill. For some behaviors, frequent sampling intervals may be necessary to describe variability of behaviors from day to day, especially during periods of rapid change. Bene ts - Rich descriptive information about the process of change Drawbacks - Take a lot of time to code behaviors at frequent intervals or frame-by-frame; may lack generalizability, because most micorgenetic studies rely on small samples Ex. Studying childrens’ approach to mathematical reasoning and problem solving over a period of time to see trends in mathematical development over time, transitions between crawling and walking, GENETIC STUDIES Examine questions about genetic in uences on development by measuring the degree of behavioral similarity among people varying in genetic relatedness Includes twin studies, adoption studies, and genome-wide association studies ◆ Twin studies - Test whether genetic similarity relates to behavioral similarity ◇ Identical twins have nearly the same genetic makeup, whereas fraternal twins are no more genetically alike than any two non-twin siblings. Suppose that similarity on a given behavior tends to be greater between identical twins than between fraternal twins; this would support the hypothesis that genetics contribute to the target behavior. fi fi fi fi fl  ◆ Adoption studies - Investigates whether adopted children are more similar to their biological parents/ siblings (who have similar genetic makeup) or to their adoptive parents/siblings (who share their home environment but are dissimilar genetically) ◆ Genome-wide association studies - Analyze massive amounts of DNA information across thousands of participants and relate DNA to speci c outcomes ◇ Ex. DNA corresponds to intelligence. Researcher would gather information on the intelligence and DNA from participants and then use powerful computers to process the resulting information. If similarity in people’s intelligence increases in line with the resemblance of their DNA, genetics can be considered to play a role Bene ts - Espeically useful or assessing genetic contributions to development Drawbacks - Reuire large samples that may take much effort to recruit (such as MZ and DZ twins), certain types of analysis, such as those based on genetic similarities require thousands of participants. Twin and adoption studies fail to consider the potential effects of how parents treat children, and how children might treat their children differently, affecting children’s’ behaviors. Distinguish among the different types of validity and explain why they are crucial to the quality of research. VALIDITY - degree to which an effects observed within experiments can be attributed to the factor that the researcher is testing Face validity - the purpose of the test (the questions) is clear to people who look it over. ○ Ex. Asking parents what they would do if their child misbehaves, followed with various options, has strong face validity to test whether punitive dsiciplinary practices lead to child aggression. However, if the researchers used the same items to assess parents’ love for children, one might be more skeptical about the validity of the question. ○ Important to the quality of research because the measures must be applicable to what is being studied Construct validity - the extent to which a test measures what it purports to measure ○ Ex. If researchers developed a test of “intelligence”, construct validity would refer to the extent that the test accurately measures a person’s intelligence. ○ Important to quality of research because then the research might be measuring something else or measuring inaccurately. Concurrent validity - re ects the degree to which scores on a test correspond to those on another test of the same construct at the same point in time. ○ Ex. if researchers developed a new intelligence test that they claimed could assess a child’s intelligence in a fraction of the time it takes to conduct the commonly used test, concurrent validity would be shown if children’s scores on the new test correlated strongly with their scores on the standard test. ○ Important to quality of research because it shows that the test is accurate. Predictive validity - re ects the degree to which scores on a test at one point in time predict scores on a similar or related test or criterion (often over time). to what degree can the measure predict other variables to be measured at a different point in time? ○ Ex. the intelligence example, predictive validity would be demonstrated if the new intelligence test predicted intelligence years later or predicted SAT scores later in high school. ○ Important to quality of research because then it means the test can be used to predict similar variable scores of a child’s develeopment. External validity - refers to the extent to which a test can be applied across different settings or groups of people. fi fl fl fi  ○ Requires modi cation of items/measures. ○ Important to quality of research because the measures need to be understandable to different settings/g De ne different forms of reliability. RELIABILITY - the degree that a test, measurement, or a task of a given behavior have consistent scores for participants across different observers or over time. Interobserver reliability - refers to the extent to which different observers using a test arrive at the same resultS ○ Ex. Two observers recording how many times a child plays with the toys vs. not plays with the toys to test behavioral regulation. The observers score the child’s’ behavior separately, and the amount of agreement indicates if the test needs to be modi ed or not. Test-retest reliability - when an individual receives the same score (or close to the previous score) when tested at different times under similar conditions. ○ Ex. Children’s sclroes on the second assessment were not consistent with their scores on the initial assessment for behavioral regulation. Explain the concepts of replication and transparency in research, and why transparency is vital to replication REPLICABILITY - refers to the degree to which the ndings of a study are con rmed when repeated using the identical procedures applied in the original study with a new sample. SCIENTIFIC TRANSPARENCY - complete openness about all the steps of the scienti c enterprise. Transparency is vital to replication because all the steps/procedures done in the original study need to be done exactly as done before. If anything is done slightly different or a step is missed either due to instruction errors or purposefully not reporting all information, results might come out differently. OPEN SCIENCE - a movement that encourages reserachers to fully document and share information on a study’s procedures, recruitment methods, participant characteristics, measures, raw data, analyses, and funding sources, including any video recordings Explain why developmental research must adhere to ethical guidelines and the process used to ensure the ethical treatment of children. Developmental research must adher to ethnically guidelines to stop and mitigate any potential physical or psychological harm to participants during and after the study. ETHNICAL GUIDELINES The research must not harm participants in any way Participation in research must be voluntary. Participants should sign documents giving their informed consent to participate. Children who cannot read may be asked to provide verbal assent, and when children are too young to give consent, legal guardians must provide informed consent Participants have the right to withdraw from the study at any time and to not participate in procedures that make them feel uncomfortable. Participants must be assured of con dentiality and anonymity of all the information they provide. For example, participant data should be stored in locked closets and/or in password-protected computerized formats, and identi ers such as names and social security numbers should not be connected to individual data. There the full disclosure and no deception. However, if there is deception, participants must be debriefed after any study. For example, if an experimenter asks a child to solve a puzzle that is impossible to solve, resulting in a high level of frustration for the child, debrie ng would try to mitigate the negative effects of that frustration. Researchers should evaluate the risk-bene t ratio to ensure that the potential bene ts of a research study outweigh the potential risks. For example, if a researcher of children’s learning believes that a certain improved curriculum would facilitate math learning, and knows from other research that a prior tested curriculum was ineffective, it would be unethical to randomly assign children to be taught with the “ineffective” curriculum. fi fi fi fi fi fi fi fi  To ensure these ethical guidelines are adhered to, they must obtain approval from their institution’s scienti c review board by submitting an application of their research plans.