Lec #1 Development and Research Methods Flashcards
tabula rasa
Locke and Aristotle believed that children are like blank slates, whose development reflects the nurture provided by the child’s parents and the broader society
The “turtle shell” technique is an example of a successful intervention that helps preschoolers cope with what?
bullying from peers
the 7 questions child developmental psychology attempts to answer?
- How do nature and nurture together shape development? (Nature and nurture)
- How do children shape their own development? (the active child)
- In what ways is development continuous, and in what ways is it discontinuous? (continuity/ discontinuity)
- How does change occur? (mechanisms of change)
- How does the sociocultural context influence development? (the sociocultural context)
- How do children become so different from one another? (individual differences)
- How can research promote children’s well-being? (research and children’s welfare)
genome
each person’s complete set of hereditary information
epigenetics
the study of stable changes in gene expression that are mediated by the environment
methylation
biochemical process that influences behaviour by suppressing gene activity and expression
continuous development
the idea that changes with age occur gradually, in small increments, like that of a pine tree growing taller and taller
- Most researchers have concluded that most of the developmental changes are gradual rather than sudden and that development occurs skill by skill rather than in a broadly unified way
discontinuous development
the idea that changes with age include occasional large shifts, like the transition from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly
How is Piaget’s conversation about the liquid-quantity problem a form of demonstrating the phenomenon of discontinuous development in children?
In this task, a child’s understanding of quantity conservation changes dramatically as they move from the preoperational stage (where conservation is lacking) to the concrete operational stage (where conservation is understood). This abrupt shift demonstrates that cognitive development is not a continuous process but occurs in distinct, non-overlapping stages.
stage theories
- approaches proposing that development involves a series of large, discontinuous, age-related phases
- a child’s entry into a new stage involves relatively sudden, qualitative changes that affect the child’s thinking or behaviour in broadly unified ways and move the child from one coherent way of experiencing the world to a different coherent way of experiencing it.
Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 Years)
- Infants in this stage learn about the world through their senses and motor actions.
- They develop object permanence, realizing that objects continue to exist even when out of sight.
Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 Years):
- Children become more proficient in language and mental representation.
- They are egocentric, struggle with conservation tasks, and may exhibit magical thinking.
Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11 Years)
- Children begin to think logically and understand concepts like conservation and reversibility.
- They can solve problems with tangible objects but still have difficulty with abstract thinking.
Formal Operational Stage (11 Years and Older)
- Adolescents and adults in this stage can think abstractly, hypothetically, and reason about complex, hypothetical situations.
- They develop the ability to engage in deductive reasoning and problem-solving
Sociocultural context
the physical, social, cultural, economic, and historical circumstances that make up any child’s environment
Socioeconomic status (SES)
a measure of social class based on income and education
what are the 4 factors Scarr (1992) identified that can lead children from a single family (as well as children from different families) to turn out very different from one another?
- Genetic differences
- Differences in treatment by parents and others
- Differences in reactions to similar experiences
- Different choices of environments
4 steps of the scientific method
- Choosing a question to be answered
- Formulating a hypothesis regarding the question
- Developing a method for testing the hypothesis
- Using the resulting data to draw a conclusion regarding the hypothesis
Hypotheses
testable predictions of the presence or absence of phenomena or relations
Reliability
the degree to which independent measurements of a given behaviour are consistent
Interrater reliability
the amount of agreement in the observations of different raters who witness the same behaviour
Test-retest reliability
the degree of similarity of a participant’s performance on two or more occasions
Validity
the degree to which a test measures what it is intended to measure
Internal validity
the degree to which effects observed within experiments can be attributed to the factor that the researcher is testing
external validity
the degree to which results can be generalized beyond the particulars of the research
Structured interviews
- research procedure in which all participants are asked to answer the same questions
- Collect self-reports on the same topics from everyone being studied
Questionnaires
a method that allows researchers to gather information from a large number of participants simultaneously by presenting them a uniform set of printed questions
Clinical interview
a procedure in which questions are adjusted in accord with the answers the interviewee provides
Naturalistic observation
examination of ongoing behavior in an environment not controlled by the researcher
structured observation
a method that involves presenting an identical situation to each participant and recording the participant’s behavior
