Introduction To Methods In developmental psychology Flashcards
What is physical development
Body size and proportions
Physical health
Perceptual and motor development
What is cognitive development
Intellectual abilities including attention and memory
Imagination and creativity
Language
What is social and emotional development
Understanding self and others
Emotional understanding and regulation
Moral reasoning and behaviour
Intimate relationships
What are the different periods of development
Pre-natal: conception to birth
Infancy and toddlerhood: birth to 2 years
Early childhood: 2-6 years old
Middle childhood: 7-11 years old
Adolescence: 11-18 years old
What is normative development
Species normal development over time
Focus on similarities
Example: Piaget’s theory of cognitive development
What is Individual differences
Differences observed between children at a given age/time/place
Example: temperament differences
What is continuous development
Development is continuous
Development involves quantitative change
Example: Information processing theories
What is discontinuous development
Development is discontinuous
Development involves qualitative changes
Example: Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
Common development Curve (Increase)
Height and weight and age
Age and vocabulary size
Common development curve (Decrease)
Age and hours of sleep needed
Age and hearing (late life decline)
Learning a new language (Johnson and Newport, 1991)
Development curves (stage like)
Qualitative or discontinuous
Cognitive development according to Piaget (1954)
Moral development according to Kohlberg 1981)
What is Nature (side of the debate)
Biological instincts
Innate behaviour traits
Genetic influences
What is the nurture (side of the debate)
Environment
Culture
Context
Family influences
Environmental influences
Observational Research (naturalistic)
In the natural environment where behaviour happens
E.g. Farver and Branstetter (1994)
* youtube vid
Observational Research (structured)
Laboratory situations set up evoke behaviour of interest
All participants have equal chance to display behaviour
E.g. Mischel, Ebbsen ad Zeiss (1972)
*youtube vid
Collecting systematic observations (two types)
Event sampling: Observer records all instances of a specific behaviour during a given time period
Time sampling: Observer records whether certain behaviours occur during a sample of short time intervals
Limitations of observational research (two types)
Observer Influence: Participants may react in unnatural ways, can minimise using camera or observer familiar to children.
Observer Bias: Observer record what they expect, rather than what really happens
Interview limitations with parents and children
Children: may not understand due to level of language and understanding.
Children may be influenced by desire to please
Parents: may want to achieve and avoid diagnosis for their child.
Distortions in recall or judgment
Whats a Clinical/Case study method
Gathers a wide range of information on one child.
Observations
Parent/caregiver interviews
Test scores
Psychophysiological measures
Experiments outside the lab (two types)
Field Experiment: Natural setting i.e. observing children in the playground.
Natural Experiment: Quasi experiment
Compare differences
i.e. observing children playing at state vs private school
Lab experiments - Infants
Methodologies: Novelty preference, Preferential looking paradigms, Habituation paradigms
Operant Conditioning: Eye movements, Psychophysiological measures (e.g. heart rate), Neuroimaging
Preferential Looking - Frantz’s looking chamber (1961)
- infant can see two displays on the ceiling above their head
- researcher observes them through a peep whole to see if they fixate on a specific image
- Infant looks longer at a pattern than uniform visual display
Modern Preferential looking
- when a baby has a tendency to view one particular image over another
- Visual and auditory stimuli
Habituation Paradigms
- Babies are attracted to contrasts between light and shadow which look like human face (when they are 6 weeks)
- When ten weeks they start to look at images like the face and ignore the contrast
What is operant conditioning (two types)
Reinforcer: increases probability occurring again i.e. presenting desirable stimulus and removing unpleasant stimulus
Punishment: Reduces probability of behaviour occurring again i.e.presenting unpleasant and removing desirable.
Carolyn Rovee-Collier (e.g. 1999)
- Babies’ ankle attached to mobile by ribbon
- Babies soon learn to kick vigorously
- Memory of how to activate mobile context dependent in 3-6 months olds
Psychophysiological methods
- Measures of autonomic nervous system activity
- Heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, pupils, stress, hormones (sensitive to psychological state)
EEG
young children, non invasive
measures ongoing, spontaneous electrical activity
ERP
Records brain electrical response to given stimuli
Used with infants
MRI
Imaging the morphology of brain structures
Older children on children who are sedated
What is a longitudinal research design
1 sample studied repeatedly at different ages
Comparing same sample at different times
Cross-sectional research designs
More than one sample (age group studied)
Comparing different samples at the same time
Limitations of longitudinal desings
- Biased sample
- Some people more likely to withdraw than others
- Practise Effects
- Cohort effects i.e. covid
Sequential research designs
Same groups of different aged people studied repeatedly as they can change ages
Cross section and longitudinal
informs us of age related trends
Challenges for developmental science
- sample size
- subtle differences between labs
- High costs
Many Babies project
Input predictors: A few hours of annotated video, or artificial data
Scientific hypothesis about learning
Outcomes: A handful of binary experimental results
- This needs more data
What are the ethics of research with children
- more vulnerable to harm
- Issue of informed consent (they may not understand)
- right to withdraw (they desire to please)
BPS (2014), children under 16 parents should be fully informed of nature of study and be able to withdraw child.
