Chapter 1: research methods Flashcards
What are folk theories of development?
Ideas held about development that aren’t based on scientific evidence
What are the 2 basic world views and what do they represent?
- Organismic: people are active and continuously interacting with enviornment and help shape their own development
- Mechanistic: people are machines which are passive until stimulated by environment
Which type of psychology fits well with the mechanistic world view?
Behaviorism
–> Skinner: child is passive in conditioning
Which researcher fits perfectly in the organismic world view?
Piaget: each new stage represents an advance on preceding stage
What is a cohort? What is a cohort effect?
Group of people who were raised in the same environment/time
Cohort effect= age groups have more in common than age only
What are the 4 main desings for studying age-related changes?
- Longitudinal
- Cross-sectional
- Microgenetic
- Sequential designs
What is the downside of cross-sectional testing? Name 3 things
- Only describes age differences: you have no information about the curve of development
- Cohort effects
- No answer to how differences arise
What is the microgenetic method of studying? What is the benefit of this design compared to longitudinal / cross-sectional designs?
Provides in depth analysis of behavior in a system while change is occurring
Benefit: more detail about period of transitions and it’s more detailed
What is the downside of longitudinal studies?
- Time consuming
- Effects repeated testing, different measuring instruments over time
- Not a causal relationship
- Selective survivorship, participant attrition –> Population bias
- Not always generalizable to other cohorts
Give an example of a cohort effect
E.g. children’s health care over the last century
What are two explanations for differences in cross-sectional and longitudinal results?
- Cohort effects
- Length of time between measures
–> Cross sectional can suggest continuous but longitudinal indicates stages/bursts
What are sequential designs?
Combination of longitudinal and cross-sectional designs that examines development of individuals from different age cohorts
With which type of design was the flynn effect proven?
With sequential designs
What are the 4 types of research methods?
- Observational studies
- Experimental methods
- Correlational studies
- Psychological testing
What is the difference between time and event sampling?
Time sampling = observational study that records at frequent intervals of time
Event sampling = observational study that records during particular events
What is the clinical method or structured observation?
Natural behavior is observed and then the environment is changed to better understand the behavior of interest
What is the difference between structured observation and an experimental method?
There is less control of the environment in structured observations
What is psychological testing as a research method?
Instruments for quantitative assessment of a psychological aspect of a person
Why is it hard to predict adult personality?
Personality is very environment dependent
What are the 2 types of correlational studies? Give an example of each
- Concurrent: relationship between variables measured at same time
–> Similarity IQ in twins - Predictive: finding if individuals retain their relative rank relative to others over time
–> intelligent child also bright at age 20
What is a marker task?
A task that elicits a behavior with a known neural basis.
What is the difference between EEG, PET and fMRI and which one is most suitable for researching children?
EEG: measures ERP’s, difficult for deeper brain areas –> suitable for kids
PET: positron emission tomography, measuring blood flow –> unsuitable because of injections
fMRI: functional magnetic resonance imaging, measures blood flow –> noisy, expensive, not common to use with kids
What is the catharsis hypothesis and what did research say about this?
Argument that watching aggression in others reduces your own aggressive feelings
Research: seeing aggression increases own aggression
What is ecological validity?
If a study is meaningful to the real world
What are 5 components of social policies (e.g. headstart and sure start)?
- Preschool enrichment
- Health screening
- Nutrition education
- Social services
- Parent education
What are 5 developmental functions? Give an example for each one
- Continuous increasing function (intelligence)
- Continuous decreasing function (speech perception infants)
- Discontinuous step-function (ToM, Piaget)
- Inverted U-shape (visual acuity)
- Upright U-shape (step movement)
What are important aspects of reliability?
Test-retest and consistency
What are important aspects of validity?
Construct, ecological and predictive validity (do I measure what I want to measure)
