Developmental Area Flashcards
What are the principles of the developmental area?
Focuses on how behaviour changes over time.
Assumes that what happens when we are children will shape our behaviour as adults.
Human development is an interaction of the influences of nature and nurture.
What are the key concepts of the developmental area?
External influences on children’s behaviour
Moral development
Social learning theory
Operant conditioning
What are the core studies within the developmental area?
Bandura
Chaney
Kohlberg
Lee
What are the strengths of the developmental area?
Many useful applications to child care, education, etc.
Uses a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods so will gain useful data.
Can study participants over time to reduce participant variables.
What are the weaknesses of the developmental area?
Research may be constrained by time or culture due to changes in early years environments and cultural differences in child rearing.
Samples are often small and may be unrepresentative.
Research with children may raise ethical issues, such as consent and protection.
How useful is the research of the developmental area?
Can be useful for parents to carefully manage what their children are exposed to on TV. For example, ensuring they do not see really violent TV shows or ones that include swearing as this could negatively influence the child’s behaviour
What is the background of Bandura?
Children would imitate behaviours shown by an adult model, but this was restricted to children imitating while the adult was still present.
What are the aims of Bandura?
To see whether children would imitate adult behaviour when given the opportunity, even if they saw these behaviours in a different environment and the original ‘model’ they observed performing the behaviour was no longer present.
What is the sample of Bandura?
72 children enrolled at Stanford University Nursery. They ranged from 37-69 months old. (36 boys, 36 girls).
What is the procedure of Bandura?
Matched participants design was used. to match the children on mean age, gender split, mean aggression rating.
24 children in each condition.
Stage 1:
Aggressive Model Condition- Each child was taken individually to a room. The child was taken to a table and given toys to play with. Model sat at another table with tinker toys, bobo doll and a mallet.
Model played with tinker toy for one minute and then turned to the bobo doll and sat on it and punched it repeatedly in the nose, it then hit it in the head with a mallet. In addition to using verbal aggression like ‘sock him in the nose’. Aggression repeated 3 times
Non-aggressive model: Same as above but model ignored tinker toy
Control group: No model whatsoever
Stage 2: Children were taken to a smaller room with attractive toys to play with, like a toy fire engine. The child was told they could play with the toys but after 2 minutes, the experimenter told the child that these were her very best toys and not everyone can play with them and moved the kids to another room.
Stage 3: All 72 children taken back to the main room, one by one and were observed throw a one-way mirror. A record was made every 5 seconds of the behaviour being show by each child. Behaviours recorded were, imitative behaviour of physical or verbal aggression, partial imitative behaviours of aggression, novel aggressive behaviour. Half of the children also scored independently by a second observer and then compared with the other observers to see consistency
What are the results of Bandura?
Boys watching an aggressive male model gave 25.8 aggressive acts vs only 1.5 when watching a male non-aggressive model.
Boys also showed on average 38.2 imitative physical aggressive acts and girls only 12.7
Boys also made comments like, ‘that aint no way for a lady to behave’ and ‘He’s a good fighter like daddy’
What are the conclusions of Bandura?
- Children would imitate the aggressive model but only when they model is still present
- Supported the idea that children would imitate the model even when the model wasn’t there. (Boys should 25.89 mean number of aggressive acts when model wasn’t there)
- Children learn by observation and then imitate.
What was the research method in Bandura?
Laboratory Experiment
How does Bandura relate to the developmental area?
Bandura et al .’s study falls within the developmental area because it is investigating how the environment around a child (particularly in terms of the adult behaviours they see and hear) can affect the behaviours they end up adopting themselves.
How does Bandura relate to the key theme?
With reference to the key theme of external influences on children’s behaviour, Bandura et al .’s study demonstrates the importance of the environment in which the child is brought up, as these external factors will shape a person’s behaviour.
How is Bandura valid?
Bandura et al . worked in a controlled manner to ensure that there was little in the way of extraneous variables which would reduce the validity of his research. By putting the toys in the same place in the observation room, the children would not behave differently if they went for the first toy they came across.
The model also had a certain number of actions to be repeated an exact number of times, so that again the child wasn’t exposed to different aggressive acts.
The pre-testing of the children (for their prior levels of aggression) and the way in which they were placed in different conditions on a matched basis meant that the results could not have been affected by all the ‘naturally’ aggressive children accidentally ending up in the same condition.
How is Bandura reliable?
The procedure was highly replicable, as was shown by the fact that it was replicated with so many children during the experiment. However, it is arguable that the sample was not large enough to establish reliable effects, as there were only six children in each condition.
Is Bandura ethnocentric?
The fact that the study was carried out in America (presumably on American children) is also of relevance here, given that America is different from many other countries in its high levels of gun ownership. This may have affected the likelihood of the children learning aggressive behaviour. So the research is ethnocentric if we assume the same imitative nature of learning behaviour happens in every culture as it does in America.
Which side of the nature/nurture debate does Bandura support?
Research shows that parents reinforce stereotypical behaviour, playing with a boy who picks up a tractor, and not playing with a boy who picks up a doll.
Also, the words parents use when talking to babies, strong masculine words of big boy, strong little man, etc., compared with beautiful little girl, can from the first interactions mould a child to fit in with society’s stereotypical view.
This is more evidence of the nurture side of the debate, but we need to consider the nature side of testosterone levels alongside this. Cross-cultural research is a good way of assessing what are universal human behaviours and what are culturally specific behaviours.
Which side of the free will/determinism debate does Bandura support?
Physical aggression shown by female role models was not imitated to the extent that aggression shown by male role models was. This indicates some choices being made by the children as to what was an acceptable way to behave. Also the verbal aggression
was imitated more by the children.
This cognitive aspect of the children’s behaviour, thinking about what they should or shouldn’t do, would indicate that humans have some free will, even in what seems to be an environmentally deterministic situation.
Which side of the reductionism/holism debate does Bandura support?
–
Which side of the individual/situational debate does Bandura support?
More situational because it looks at the circumstances of having an aggressive model or not aggressive model and how it influences the behaviour of the children.
How useful is the research of Bandura ?
The 9 p.m. watershed was introduced by the BBC when the television divides between programmes that are suitable for children and programmes that are unsuitable for children.
How have the ethical considerations been kept/broken in Bandura ?
The parents agreed to their children taking part in research when they signed them up for the nursery.
The children were not aware of the right to withdraw and so they had no choice as to whether they took part.
No debrief
The second stage of the experiment would also be harmful to a child’s self-esteem, and causing anxiety in such young children considered unacceptable.
How socially sensitive is the research of Bandura?
It can be socially sensitive to suggest that children will imitate model’s behaviour as parents of ill-behaved kids may be subject to discrimination for bad parenting.
How scientific is the research of Bandura?
Replicable because of the standardised procedure, for example in stage 3, All 72 children taken back to the main room, one by one and were observed throw a one-way mirror.
Falsifiable because researchers can replicate the study an then find different results to prove Bandura wrong.
What is the background of Chaney?
Asthma is a chronic condition that affects about 1 in 10 people. Even though there are treatments for asthma, the problem is that some people (particularly little children), do not use their inhalers correctly.
What are the aims of Chaney?
The aim of this study was to see if operant conditioning could be used to encourage children to want to use their inhalers, and when they do; use it correctly.
What is the sample of Chaney?
32 children from Australia aged between 1.5 and 6 years. (22 boys, 10 girls)
What is the procedure of Chaney?
Parents were contacted by phone before being visited at home. Written, informed consent was obtained from parents before they filled in a questionnaire about their child’s current inhaler spacer device (either Aerochamber or Breath-a-Tech).
Parents were given a Funhaler to use with their child for 2 weeks.
After the 2 weeks, parents were contacted again and given another questionnaire to fill in (this time
asking them about the Funhaler spacer device).
What are the results of Chaney?
% of children who had used their inhaler the day before increased from 59% (inhaler) to 81% (funhaler)
% of children who achieved 4 or more breath cycles per delivery increased (50 existing inhaler to 80 funhaler)
% of parents who always successfully medicated their child 10 with existing inhaler- 73% with funhaler
Attitude of parents to medication 10% with inhaler to 61% with funhaler
What are the conclusions of Chaney?
From the questionnaires, it would appear that the Funhaler led to an increase in use, and correct use at that (four or more breaths per cycle). Parents also tended to be less likely to give up and resort to a nebuliser if they were using the Funhaler.
How does Chaney relate to the developmental area?
This study falls within the developmental area as it is illustrating a way in which children learn and how parents can help their children to acquire desired behaviours – namely, through both positive and negative reinforcement.
How does Chaney relate to the key theme?
In relation to the key theme of external influences on children’s behaviour, Chaney et al . have shown how the external influences favoured by the behaviourist perspective have a great impact on children’s behaviour. The Funhaler changed not only the use of the inhaler, to increase adherence, but also the attitude towards the inhaler in both parents and children, which would be linked to increased adherence.
How is Chaney valid?
A problem with using self-report, which will affect the validity of the research, is the problem of social desirability. Society demands parents to take care of their children, and to admit a failure to do so is unthinkable, therefore parents might lie to do as society wishes (social desirability). I
By using a field experiment, Chaney et al . had to contend with extraneous variables which might also reduce the validity of the research. Without bringing the children in to a lab and giving inhalers, we have no way of knowing what went on during this research which might have also influenced the use of the inhaler. This is where we would reduce the ecological validity of the research and we would no longer see natural behaviour.
The natural setting of the research, taking place in the child’s home where they would normally use their inhaler, means ecological validity is high.
How is Chaney reliable?
Although this was conducted in the field, there were many aspects that were standardised, aiding replicability. The questionnaire was the same for each participant, and the length of time using the Funhaler was the same. The Funhaler was the same for all the children – same design, same instructions and so the action of the Funhaler would have been the same for each child, with weak spins for poor breath exhalation and faster spins for good breath exhalation.
However, the fact that the study was conducted with only 32 children raises the question of whether the sample was large enough to establish a consistent effect.
