developmental area

Question 1

principle

Answer 1

• Focuses on how behaviour changes over time.
• Assumes that what happens when we are children (early influences and upbringing) will shape our behaviour as adults.

Question 2

concepts

Answer 2

• moral development
• social learning theory
• operant conditioning (positive reinforcement,
  negative reinforcement)

Question 3

studies

Answer 3

• Bandura
• Kohlberg
• Chaney
• Lee et al

Question 4

strengths of area

Answer 4

• many useful applications to child care, education etc
• attempts to answer to nature/nurture debate
• uses a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods so will gain useful data
• can study participants over time to reduce participant variables

Question 5

weakness of developmental area

Answer 5

• research with children may raise ethical issues such as consent and protection
• using children as participants can highlight practical issues such as making inferences from observed behaviour as they cant tell us
• research may be constrained by time or culture due to changes in early years environment and cultural differences in child rearing
• samples are often small and may be unrepresentative