7: Exam 1 Essay Questions Flashcards
List two advantages and two disadvantages of longitudinal designs. Explain each of these.
Advantages: Assess developmental changes and its shape. Can find patterns of individual differences in outcome variables like memory, vocabulary.
Assess developmental stability of abilities/behaviours in individuals. Longitudinal studies allow you the unique opportunity to track patterns of individual differences.
Disadvantages: Expensive, time-consuming. Running a research project for long periods of time requires large amounts of funding and commitment from experimenters.
Risk of selective dropout with age. Selective dropout is the tendency of some people more likely to drop out than others, threatening validity.
List two advantages and two disadvantages of between-groups designs. Explain each of these.
Advantages: No carry-over effects; that is, there are no effects from one experimental condition that carry over onto another (e.g., getting subsequently better at each test).
No order effects; that is, the positioning of tasks does not influence the outcome as it is not a repeated measures design.
Disadvantages: Requires large number of participants for useful data. Each participant goes through one condition, so need to add a new group for each condition.
Individual variability can affect outcomes. Given you are using separate groups, it is impossible to maintain homogeneity; thus, it is more difficult to control for confounds.
What is test validity? Define what is meant by test validity. List and explain three kinds of test validity.
The extent to which a test accurately measures what it is supposed to measure.
Content validity refers to the extent to which the test represents the entirety of the construct it wishes to measure.
Criterion validity refers to the extent that performance on a test relates to an independent measure of the same abilities, with two subsets - concurrent validity deals with performance in the same time period, predictive validity deals with future performance.
Construct validity refers to the correct theoretical explanation for performance on a test, with two subsets - convergent validity refers to correlation with other theoretically-related tasks, whereas divergent/discriminant validity refers to a lack of correlation with dis-like tasks.
Explain what is meant by internal validity problems. Give an example of how internal validity problems could arise from development designs themselves and give an example of how it could arise when using age as a predictor variable.
Internal validity refers to the extent that you are testing what you are supposed to be testing, relating to well a study is conducted, and problems arise in the presence of a confounding variable.
Internal validity problems are present in longitudinal designs. Given longitudinal designs have measures at different time periods, history can pose a threat to internal validity; that is, differences between measures may not be due to your predictor variable, but any other event experienced between measures.
When using age as a predictor variable, you lose the ability to counter confounds with random and/or blind assignment, as you are selecting for age and cannot randomly assign participants to different age groups. Thus, since internal validity is required to make cause-and-effect conclusions, your study would be more descriptive than causal.
There are four main ethics principles researchers must follow when conducting research. List and briefly explain each of these principles. Provide brief examples about how each of these might be compromised when conducting research with children.
Informed consent: informing children of study purpose and debriefing.
Voluntary participation: ensuring children are participating on their own volition, not due to coercion.
Freedom from harm: the duty to prevent undue harm during the course of the study. If a level of harm is introduced, the benefits posed by the study must outweigh it.
Confidentiality: the duty to ensure the protection of participants’ personal and sensitive information.
Briefly describe the preferential-looking paradigm. Explain what can be concluded when a preference is found and when no preference is found.
Records how infant’s eye fixations vary for a range of visual stimuli, ranging from simple to complex.
When a preference is found, it implies an infant’s ability to discriminate facets of stimuli. When no preference is found, that does not necessarily mean there is no discriminability, but it may suggest poor visual acuity.
Briefly describe Meltzoff and Moore’s findings on neonatal imitation. What did they conclude on the basis of their results? Based on more recent research, what have others concluded about imitation in neonates? Provide one piece of evidence to support their claims.
Research suggests that neonates can imitate tongue protrusion, lip protrusion, mouth opening, and sequential-finger-movement. They concluded that neonates are capable of genuine imitation.
Recent research suggests that imitation in neonates may be an innate releasing mechanism, confirming only tongue protrusion in infants. When babies demonstrate tongue protrusion for pens, it may “suggest” a nipple.
What is the A-not-B Search Task? How is it administered? According to Piaget, why do infants make the A-not-B error? What evidence exists against Piaget’s account? What is one alternative interpretation? Provide one piece of evidence for or against this alternative explanation.
Hide attractive toy under box “A”, baby searches for toy and finds it, activity repeated several times. Experimenter moves toy under box “B”, also within easy reach of baby.
Babies 8 months or younger perseverate, meaning they look under box “A” even though saw experimenter move toy under box “B”. Piaget argued this meant lack of object permanence.
However, increasing distance between boxes and/or increasing distinctiveness of covers reduces errors. Diamond argued the task represents a memory and inhibition failure, as fragile memory cannot compete with previously rewarded behaviour. During a sandbox A-not-B task, which reduces spatial cues, children were biased towards A when searching at B.
What is executive function? Define it and describe three processes involved in executive function.
Executive function refers to the set of cognitive abilities necessary for cognitive control of behaviour.
Working memory is the part of short-term memory responsible for temporarily holding information available for processing.
Motor response inhibition involves inhibiting responses to desires or dominant responses.
Cognitive flexibility is the ability to mentally switch between two different concepts, and to think about multiple concepts at the same time.
Describe what is meant by a “theory of mind”. Briefly describe a false-belief task, making sure to identify essential features of the task, and explain why passing this task provides evidence that children have a theory of mind.
Theory of mind entails the understanding that others have mental states that they base reality on and act on them accordingly. It permits accurate prediction of others’ thoughts and behaviours.
A false-belief task is a measure in which children must infer that another person/character does not possess knowledge that they possess.
Using specific examples from Watson and Rayner’s study, describe how they failed on four of the following ethical issues: Independent review, Freedom from harm, Voluntary participation, Informed Consent, Confidentiality.
The study lacked independent review, especially in the circumstance where they assumed that the fear reactions intended in the conditioned emotional responses would be no different than that experienced at home. They went off their own rationale without any independent insight.
The study failed the ethical principle of freedom from harm, as the researchers failed to reverse the psychological harm (de-condition) inflicted upon the participant, where the participant developed a legitimate fear of white, furry objects (ranging from rats to even Santa Claus, implying a comprehensive association) that are likely to persist following the events of the study.
The study failed the ethical principle of voluntary participation by obtaining consent from Albert’s mother, a wet nurse employed at the hospital in which the experiment was conducted. Thus, it is possible that a conflict of interest is present and coercion cannot be ruled out, as Albert’s mother may have felt pressured to conduct the study due to employment at the same hospital.
The study failed the ethical principle of informed consent as it is unclear whether Watson and Rayner informed Albert’s mother of the extent of their conditioning experiments, nor did they thoroughly debrief Albert’s mother at the conclusion of the study. Albert’s mother suddenly removing Albert from the hospital may imply that she was unaware of the extent of psychological harm that would be inflicted on her child.
Discuss Judy DeLoache’s work on children’s ability to use scale models to guide search. Briefly describe the paradigm and the basic finding, DeLoache’s interpretation of this finding, and two qualitatively different pieces of support for her interpretation.
Groups of toddlers watched as experimenters hid miniature toys in a model room, asked to retrieve the larger versions of the toys from the larger room. The three-year-olds performed the retrieval task well; however, the two-and-a-half-year-olds did not.
DeLoache interpreted this as a dual representation between symbols and objects, and younger children were failing to represent symbolic properties of the model due to its salient object properties.
If you emphasize symbolic properties, or deemphasize object properties (e.g., behind window), 2.5-year-olds perform better. If you remove symbolic requirements and believe the model is the room itself, not a symbol for it (as seen in DeLoache’s credible shrinking room), participants fare much better.
