Module 1 Flashcards
one of the main reasons to study dev psych
- children rearing (looking after/raising)
- better understand how social policy decisions influence development
- insight to human nature
What early greek philosophers believed welfare of society depended on proper child rearing
Aristotle and Plato
How did Plato and Aristotle’s beliefs differ in how children developed/acquired knowledge?
- Plato: children are born w innate, conceptual knowledge (nature)
- Aristotle: all knowledge comes from experience (nurture)
who view children as blank slates or tabula rasa?
- John Locke (1632-1704)
- development is a product of environment
- pro discipline, viewed as more important than freedom/autonomy for development
What did Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) believe?
- children learn best from their interactions with the world
- no formal education before 12 y/o (freedom to explore and dev indecently)
When did philosophical ideas begin to be replaced by more formalized research?
1800s
what are the two societal factors that drove research on child dev?
- social reform
- theory of evolution
social reform
- industrial revolution
- children work as labourers w bad working conditions
- children given dangerous jobs bc of small size
- began to wonder how these work enviros impact long-term dev?
theory of evolution
- Darwin
- theorist began to believe that studying child dev may lead to deeper insight to human nature
- Darwin observed his own kids: A biographical sketch of an infant (1877)
What did Freud emphasize the importance of?
childhood and developmental theory
John Watson was one of the first behaviouralists to study ____.
learning in children
nature
genes passed down from parents
nurture
physical and social enviro
Interaction (nature/nuture)
- epigenetics
- how gene expression are mediated by enviro
active child
- how children shape and contribute to their own development
- action -> reactions-> development
- ex. kicking mother in the womb
examples of ways children are active in their own development
- eye gaze: choose where to direct their eyes, show interest of stimuli, earliest choices children make
- interpreting experiences and self-regulation: children are active agents in development by how they interpret experiences and regulate themselves
continuous development
- not much elemental change, incremental growth (ex getting bigger)
discontinuous development
- qualitatively different at different stages, changing in ‘steps’ (ex. changing forms, caterpillar to butterfly)
example of how development can seen continuous and discontinuous
- raising a baby, when you are constantly with the baby you see continuous and gradual growth, but if someone were to see the baby as a new born then three years later or more, they see two distinct stages (discontinuous)
what are some underlaying mechanisms that influence how children develop?
- biological: epigenetic changes, brain maturation
- behavioural: learning from enviro, rewards/punishments
- social: imitating/learning from others
- cognitive information-processing: gaining both general and specific knowledge
t or f: around 500 000 children in canada live in poverty
false, more than 1.3 million, average rate=15% (40% for indigenous)
What are the four factors Sandra Scarr hypothesized surrounding individual differences relating to dev?
- genetic differences
- differences in treatment (parents, teachers, adults treatment due to temperament)
- differences in reactions
- different choices of environments (hobbies/interests)
what are the main 7 themes often covered in this course?
- nature/nurture
- active child
- continuity vs discontinuity
- mechanisms of dev
- sociocultural context
- individual differences
- social impact of research
reliability
Consistent measurement (over time same results)
validity
is it measuring what is intended to be measured?
inter-rater reliability
- do different raters observing the same behaviour score it the same?
- ex do coders observing a playground code bullying the same?
test-retest reliability
- do children who score higher on measurement at one time score higher on another time too?
- ex. high IQ test gets similar results overtime
internal validity
- can effects within experiment be attributed to variables that researcher intentionally manipulated?
- ex. are improvements in children’s behaviour related to parenting intervention or smth else (growth/time)?
external validity
- how do lab findings translate to outside world?
- ex. ADHD is researched in controlled enviro, not likely to mirror behaviour portrayed in school/enviro w distractions
correlational study
- do children who differ in one variable also differ in others?
- determining relationship between variables of interest
Correlation coefficient
- statistic used to measure the direction and strength of a correlation
- range from -1 to +1
positive correlation vs negative correlation
- positive: high values of one variable associated with high values in another variable, same with low-low
- negative: high values in one value associated with low values in another
t or f correlation=causation
false, it only says they change in predictable ways based on each other, not that they are caused/causing each other
third variable problem
- relationship between two variables may be caused by a third
pros of correlational studies
- influence of many variables of great interest (age, sex, race, social class) cant be studied experimentally
- useful in describing relations among variables
experimental design studies goal
- look for differences between groups
- form conclusions about cause and effect
essential characteristic of experimental research
- random assignment (experimental or controlled groups)
Independent vs dependent variables
- independent: cause, manipulated
- dependent: effect, measured
what is a con to experimental research
- need for control=high internal validity
- doesn’t mirror outside world and has artificial situations= low external validity
quasi-experimental design
- no random assignment to conditions or groups
- used bc you cannot randomly assign gender, race, age, psychological disorders (ADHD) etc
- most experiments in dev psych
cross-sectional design
compares children of different ages using independent groups
- ex. differences in friendships between child and teen, collect info separately
- pros: quick, easy
- cons: unable to show relation over time, no patterns of change
longitudinal studies
- follows group of ppl over time
- pros: looks at relationship of variables over time
- cons: slow, expensive, attrition rates, practice effects
microgenetic design
- follow children on verge of important change w frequent measurements
- micro=close up genesis=beginnings
- ex. piagets dev stages
- pros: gives view of change process
- cons: slow, expensive, difficult, practice effects
interviews and questionnaires
- pros: quick and easy, tailored to child’s age
- cons: desirability bias, reliance on language, lack of understanding of why they act they way they do, lack of capacity to self-report on experiences
naturalistic and structures observations
- observational: observe and collect data as it unfolds in the moment, hard to recreate in lab
- naturalistic: collecting data unobtrusively, observe from afar
- structured observations: controlled enviro, observe behaviours
- pros: high external validity, good for studying things we cannot experimentally manipulate (social interactions)
- cons: lack of control (naturalistic), difficult for infrequent target behaviour
involuntary and voluntary responses
- involuntary: little cognitive effort (eye gaze, discriminate two different stimuli)
- voluntary: active response (ex. memory, labeling, sorting, etc)
- pros: quick, easy, high internal validity
- cons: unknown external validity
psychophysiology
- heart rate, hormone levels, brain activity
- biological mechanisms associated w dev
- pros: considered more objective than self-report data
- cons: expensive, time consuming, difficult to obtain reliable measurement w children (laying still for fMRI)
what ethical concerns must developmental psychologists be attentive to?
- vulnerability (consent)
- informed consent
- assent/agreement (be sensitive to their needs)
Naturalistic observation would probably be the method of choice for a researcher interested in:
- How children learn the meaning of a word
- How preschoolers learn to count
- The beliefs of children in an elementary school class about how smart their classmates are
- The frequency of sexual harassment behaviour among adolescents
The frequency of sexual harassment behaviour among adolescents
Imagine that a researcher is interested in examining the stability of temperament (an individual difference) over infancy and early childhood. The most effective design for this research would be:
Cross-sectional
Longitudinal
Experimental
Microgenetic
Longitudinal
A researcher finds a correlation coefficient of -.35 between children’s empathy and their aggressive behaviours. This means:
As empathy increases, aggressive behaviours also increase
As empathy increases, aggressive behaviours decrease
As empathy decreases, aggressive behaviours also decrease
Empathy and aggression do not vary in systematic ways
As empathy increases, aggressive behaviours decrease
