Chapter 1 - Studying adult dev Flashcards
Define lifespan perspective. What are the four key features of the lifespan perspective, as identified by Paul Baltes? Provide original examples for each feature.
The lifespan perspective sees development as a process that takes place throughout the whole lifespan.
This perspective constitutes an early phase and a later phase. The early phase consists of childhood and adolescence and is characterized by rapid changes in size and ability. The later phase consists of young adulthood, middle age, and old age when changes in size are slow but abilities continue to develop.
The four key features of the lifespan perspective, as identified by Paul Baltes are:
1) Multidirectionality: Development goes in two directions – growth and decline. For example, a baby’s ability to walk becomes more stable whereas an older person’s ability to walk may decrease.
2) Plasticity: Ability is not set in concrete and has the capability to grow with practice. For example, a child that plays basketball on a daily basis is likely to notice improvements in ability.
3) Historical context: How and where people grow up shapes the person we become. For example, I grew up in a small Northern Manitoba town and my experiences are very different from someone who grew up in a large city.
4) Multiple causation: A variety and combination of four forces (biological, psychological, sociocultural, and life-cycle) play a role in how each of us develops. Example: An older man gets lung cancer, suffers from depression, lives in a 3rd world with a lot of smog in the environment will be much worse off than his counterpart who never got sick, has been treated for his mood disorder, lives in Canada and in a rural mountain town with no pollution problems.
Describe the demographic changes that are occurring in the US and around the world.
Throughout the US and around the world, the population has never been as old as it is currently. Baby boomers’ aging dramatically changes the distribution of the US resident population on a graph. In the US, the number of people over 85 will increase from about 5.7 million to over 19 million in the next 30 years. The number of older Asian and Hispanic Americans are increasing incredibly quickly as opposed to European and African Americans. Europe does continue to be the oldest population, and Africa the youngest as AIDS and poor health care play a big role in shorter lives.
Describe the four forces that shape development and the three developmental influences. Provide original examples of each.
The four forces that shape development are the biological, psychological, sociocultural, and life-cycle forces.
Biological forces refer to all health-related and genetic affected development. An example of a biological force may include the changes associated with puberty.
Psychological forces refer to factors in the mind that affect development such as emotion, perception, and personality. For example, low self-esteem would be a psychological force.
Sociocultural forces refer to contexts that affect development such as culture, ethnicity, and society. For example, an Indigenous background may give someone a different life experiences than someone who is not.
Life-cycle forces refer to different combinations of the above three forces or an event that affects someone differently throughout different points in their lives. For example, someone with low self-esteem possibly minimized chances in school to be social because they did not feel confident enough to talk to others, resulting in finding a hobby such as painting. Say this person became really talented in painting and ended up making a successful career out of it. How a psychological force such as self-esteem affect this person as a young child in school affects them differently as an adult.
The three types of developmental influences are normative age-graded influences, normative history-graded influences, and nonnormative influences.
Normative age-graded influences are experiences that are caused by the developmental forces that most people that age encounter. For example, a 16 year old getting their license is often celebrated and seen as a gateway to independence.
Normative history-graded influences are events or experiences that most people encounter at the same time. For example, the Boeing 737 losses in 2019 resulted in a dramatic scrutiny towards the safety of aircraft that has changed attitudes about the safety of flying.
Nonnormative influences are not experienced by most people, but are rare and random to a specific individual. For example, a college student winning a huge bursary to pay for his next year of college.
Describe the three processes of aging and the four different meanings of age.
The three processes of aging are primary, secondary, and tertiary aging.
Primary aging refers to development during adulthood that is normal and disease free. Development processes in primary aging are inevitable.
Secondary aging refers to developmental changes that are not inevitable. For example, smoking affects lung capacity.
Tertiary aging refers to the years approaching death where rapid losses occur.
The four different meanings of age are perceived age, biological age, psychological age, and sociocultural age.
Perceived age refers to how old you think of yourself as.
Biological age refers to where people stand relative to the number of years they could likely live and is measured by assessing vital organ function.
Psychological age refers to how people function in using their psychological abilities to adapt to changing environmental demands.
Sociocultural age refers to roles an individual adopts in relation to others in that society. For example, there may be an appropriate way to dress in that community.
Discuss the four core issues in developmental psychology. Be sure to define key concepts and provide examples.
The four core issues in developmental psychology are the nature-nurture issue, the stability-change issue, the continuity-discontinuity controversy, and the universal versus context-specific development controversy.
The nature-nurture issue debates whether genetics/heredity or environment/experience is responsible for determining the kind of person you are. Nature and nature have been found to mutually influence development. For example, alcoholism is said to be hereditary but whether one becomes an alcoholic may be influenced by the environment.
The stability-change issue debates whether or not people stay the same over time. The answer to how much we change or remain the same is dependent on the area of interest and the theoretical perspective that is adopted. for example are the leisure activities you enjoyed when you were 16 the same ones you might enjoy when you are 82?
The continuity-discontinuity controversy questions whether development occurs smoothly (continuity) or if it occurs in stages (discontinuity).
Continuity focuses more on the amount of a characteristic someone shows. An example of continuity may include a child practicing baseball. At first, the child’s physical coordination needed to become a good baseball player may not be obvious. With continuous practice, development of certain skills necessary for baseball will enhance and the child will slowly become better as an athlete. Discontinuity focuses more on the kind of characteristic someone has. A person who has recently lost a close relative may be subject to a compromised immune system, and thus experience many health problems quickly. A sense of discontinuity may be expressed in several health issues coming up unpredictably and perhaps quickly.
Universal versus Context-Specific - this issue asks the question of whether we all develop in the same way across cultures and in different contexts, or are there very different ways of developing based on our environments.
Define reliability and validity. Provide original examples. Describe the three approaches to data collection, and comment on the reliability and validity of each approach. Define representative sampling.
Reliability in a study refers to the extent of which a measure provides consistent, accurate information about the topic of interest. For example, if you are using a scale, you would expect whatever object you are weighing to say the same weight every time.
Validity in a study refers to extent to which a measure is actually measuring what researchers want it to. For example, if you are wanting to measure a child’s math ability, you would perhaps give them a math quiz, not an English quiz as that would not be measuring the area of interest.
The three approaches to data collection are systematic observation, sampling behavior with tasks, and self reports.
Systematic observation is simply watching people and recording what you see. There are two types of systematic observation: naturalistic and structured observation. Whether a participant acts as they would in the real-world situation questions the validity of the approach because what researchers want to be measured may not be.
Sampling behavior with tasks is used when studying behaviors that cannot be observed directly. Tasks are created that measure the behavior of interest. Validity is questionable with this approach as the task needs to be realistic enough to represent the behavior of interest.
Self-reports consist of questionnaires and interviews. They are people’s direct answers to questions about the topic of interest. Though convenient, they can be inaccurate as participant’s memory may not be correct or they may not honestly write their answer but what they think the researcher wants to hear.
Representative sampling involves the researcher making sure that their sample is truly representative of the population of interest. For example, if you are studying stress levels among middle aged parents in Canada but only include dual income families, the results would not be representative of the whole population of middle aged parents in Canada.
List and define the three general types of research designs. Be sure to describe the strengths and weakness of each.
The three types of general designs for research are experimental design, correlational design, and case studies.
Experimental design involves manipulating a variable to study how it affects a specific behavior. Participants are randomly assigned to control groups and experimental groups. A positive to the experimental design is that researchers can infer cause-and-effect relations between the variables being studied. An experimental design in developmental research does have drawbacks as age cannot be manipulated, thus we can only find age-related effects of an independent variable on dependent variables.
Correlational design involves researchers finding relationships between variables as they occur naturally. Unfortunately, this design does not allow for cause-and-effect relations. Though it does give information about the strength of the relationship between two variables.
Case studies take place when researchers want to know more details about a single individual, particularly when there is a sort of rare phenomenon present. One person is studied in depth. Case studies open new areas of study, though they do have drawbacks because the information found may not be able to be generalized to a bigger population as the information found on one individual may not hold true for others.
Describe the three types of effects in developmental research, and explain how they are confounded. Be sure to define the term confounded, and explain the implications for developmental design.
The three types of effects in developmental research include age effects, cohort effects, and time of measurement effects.
Age effects refer to differences caused by changes in the developmental forces, such as biological, psychological, and sociocultural. Age effects are changes in the person and does not concern the passing of time.
Cohort effects refer to differences of one’s generation that are caused by unique events or experiences such as history-graded influences.
Time of measurement effects refer to the differences that occur as a result of sociocultural, environmental, historical, or other events that occur at the time of data collection from participants.
Confounding is when it cannot be distinguished which of two or more of these effects is responsible for the behavior being observed. All three are connected, which makes this task difficult.
In cross-sectional designs, age and cohort effects are confounded. We are unable to test age effects as participants are only measured once, and we are unable to distinguish cohort effects as differences in age groups may be a result of events rather than developmental processes.
In longitudinal design, time of measurement and aging are confounded because findings could result from factors relating to the time that measurement was conducted.
List and define the three specific research designs used in developmental research. Be sure to describe the strengths and weaknesses of each.
The three specific research designs used in developmental research are cross-sectional designs, longitudinal designs, and sequential designs.
Cross-sectional designs consist of testing people of different ages at the same time. Weaknesses include not being able to study how development continues as the study is only done once. As well, studying people from different age groups could produce differences that occur as a result of environmental events as opposed to developmental processes. Age and cohort effects tend to be confounded in this type of design. This design is chosen often as it is a quick and inexpensive way to obtain results.
Longitudinal designs consist of testing one group of people of the same cohort more than once during their lifetime. .Weaknesses of this design include the timely duration of the study, which can result in dropout effects. Practice effects are also present here as participants may get used to methods used. Age and time of measurement are confounded in longitudinal design, making it difficult to tell which one had an impact on results. Benefits to using this type of design include being able to study age changes because people are studied as they grow older. As well, cohort effects are removed as only one cohort is studied. This also constitutes a problem with this design since only one cohort is studied, we cannot generalize results to another cohort.
Sequential designs are a combinations of cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. The cross-sequential design is when multiple cross-sectional designs are conducted studying the same age ranges, though the participants change in each wave of testing. A longitudinal sequential design is when two or more cohorts are studied during two or more longitudinal designs. All longitudinal designs involved in the sequence last for the same period of time and follow the same age range. A strength of the longitudinal sequential design includes being able to distinguish if findings are general or more cohort specific. Sequential designs are rich in the amount of information that can be gathered, though they are expensive and take time.
Summarize the essential guidelines in conducting ethical research.
There are four essential guidelines involved in conducting ethical research:
1) Minimize risks to research participants. This guideline ensures that all methods used in research have the least potential to cause any kind of harm to research participants.
2) Describe the research to potential participants so they can determine whether they wish to participate. This guideline ensures that participants, with full knowledge of the research study, give consent to being a part of a study.
3) Avoid deception; if participants must be deceived, provide a thorough explanation o the true nature of the experiment as soon as possible. This guideline ensures that deception will be avoided unless absolutely necessary (such as when responses will be modified if the whole truth is known), and when necessary, participants will be debriefed as soon as the experiment is over.
4) Results should be anonymous or confidential. Name and contact information should not be shared publicly and should stay in the hands of the investigator. Results should not be able to be connected with any of the participants.
