Unit 1 Flashcards
What is the definition of developmental psychology? What are the main domains?
The study of change and stability throughout the lifespan
-physical, social and emotional, and cognitive (overlap/influence each other)
What ages is early childhood?
3-6 years
What ages is middle childhood?
6-11 years
What ages is adolescence
11-18/19 years
What is nature?
-biological - genes & cells & proteins
What is nurture?
everything beyond biology - your environment (physical and social)
-family, peers where you were raised, how, etc.
Is it nature or nurture? ex?
- interact with each other to influence development
- ex. epigenetics (shaped by environment but passed down through generations)
What is continuous developmental change?
-gradual progress - change in quantity over time - ex. sapling slowly growing into a tree
What is discontinuous developmental change?
- stages
- qualitatively different stages - one stage, then the next - ex. caterpillar then in cocoon then butterfly
Is Piaget a continuous or discontinuous theorist?
-discontinuous - he is a stage theorist
What is the definition of sensitive periods?
-time in which change/learning is optimal to occur - more likely to -ex. learning of languages is easier when young (until 3-7, then declines)
Why did 3-5 year olds liked lunchables? how did they test this?
-prefer flavour and texture over temperature - liked ‘make your own’ -love sugar -like soft stuff
- tested through verbal hedonic scales -linked emotions to taste - simple faces
- sometimes kids think it’s asking how they feel overall, not the taste -also cultural differences
- centration - can only focus on one attribute
- (faces used to be too complex)
What are the 4 research methods?
- self/other report
- naturalistic observation
- structured observation
- physiological measures
What are self/other report?
surveys/questionnaires/interviews /tests
What are the advantages to self/other reports?
- probe inner experience -ie emotions, motivations
- easy to administer
What are the disadvantages to self/other reports?
- not always accurate (ppl can lie) or might perform the way they think they should
- may be biased (interviewer or subject)
- for kids – may be shy, might not be able to fill it out, memory difficulties, easily influenced
What are the two types of observation research methods?
- naturalistic
- structured
Which research method is most crucial w/in developmental psych?
Observation
What is naturalistic observation? What are the two kinds?
- observing behaviour of interest in its natural setting
1) time-sampling 2) event-sampling
What is time-sampling
record all behaviours during pre-determined time period
What is event-sampling?
-record behaviour every time event of interest occurs, but not other behaviours
What are the advantages of naturalistic observation?
- reflects real-world behaviour -affordable
- for kids – might be less influenced by observer
What are the disadvantages to naturalistic observation?
- so many behaviours happening at the same time -(have to define concepts - specific)
- hard to control for things
- hard to observe rare behaviour
- little insight into why
- observer bias
What is structured observation?
research sets up situation to evoke the behaviour of interest
-ex. set up kid and parent to play in a room with toys
What are the advantages to structured observation?
- useful for rare behaviour
- same situation for everyone –> more control/equivalence
What are the disadvantages to structured observation?
- behaviour may not reflect real world
- experimenter bias
- looking for type of behaviour might see it more
- little info about inner experience
- for kids – can have ethical concerns - kids may be unwilling to engage in tasks
What are physiological measures?
- biological
- heart rate, blood pressure, pupil dilation, hormone levels etc.
- neuroimaging
What are the 4 types of neuroimaging? Describe.
- EEG/ERP ((Electroencephalogram/ Event-related Potentials): measures electrical activity in the brain)
- MRI ((Magnetic Resonance Imaging): measures brain structure using magnetic fields)
- fMRI ((Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging): measures blood flow in the brain using magnetic fields)
- NIRS ((Near-Infrared Spectroscopy): measures blood flow in the brain using light)
What are the advantages of physiological methods?
- assess biological underpinnings
- does not require language/behaviour
- good for infants
What are the disadvantages to physiological methods?
really costly
- difficult to interpret results
- lab environment (could be more nervous)
- for kids – can be loud and frightening
What do we want across all methods?
-reliability and validity
What is reliability?
consistency/repeatability
What is validity? What are the two types?
measures what the researcher thinks it’s measuring
1) internal validity
2) external validity
What is internal validity?
whether conditions internal to the design of the study allow for accurate measurement
What is external validity?
whether findings generalize beyond the original assessment
Did lunchables have external validity?
-no -couldn’t generalize to other cultures
What are the two research designs?
- correlational
- experimental
What is correlational?
- examine relationships btw variables -if there is one
- researcher doesn’t manipulate anything
- quantified
- direction (positive or negative)
- how closely tied
- not causation
What is experimental?
cause & effect
- researcher manipulates independent variable
- measures the dependent variable
- can sometimes be difficult to conduct - ethical difficulties in manipulating
When studying if fizzy sodas cause more aggression - what research design would be best?
-can probably only do correlational because of ethical concerns of getting kids to drink more sodas (which may result in making them more aggressive kids)
What are the 4 designs for studying development?
- longitudinal
- cross-sectional
- sequential
- microgenetic
Longitudinal designs?
same participants measured repeatedly across time at different ages
Cross-sectional designs?
different groups of participants at different ages measured at the same time
Pros & cons of cross-sectional compared to longitudinal
- cheaper -faster
- can have cohort effects (b/c measured at 1 time? ex. measuring something in covid - doesn’t matter the ages of participants, but might have wonky data because something happening this year)
What are cohort effects?
-results occur b/c of the characteristics of the cohort - shared experience -year, event, decade of birth etc.
What are sequential designs?
follow multiple samples of different ages over time
-combines longitudinal and cross-sectional
Limitation of sequential? Advantage?
- not always feasible
- very expensive
-can see the cohort effects
What are microgenetic designs?
track development over a short period of time over closely-spaced sessions
- training effects or learning of a new skill, studies, treatments
- microcosm of development
Advantages & limitations to microgenetic?
- can study theory of mind - see if they get better -measure changes
- can train babies reaching etc.
-can have practice effects/ get bored
Structure of the research?
-correlational or experiemental (manipulate or not)
Designs for development?
-longitudinal, corss-sectional, sequential, microgenetic (age/time frame)
Ways of gathering data?
naturalistic observation, structured observation, self/other reports, physiological (how it’s measured)
Population challenges of designing studies with kids?
- ethics
- cooperation -nervous scared?
- selection - where to find the kids
Challenges in studying changes with age?
- measuring equivalence -what does a variable look like in different ages (ex. aggression is diff for 5 yr old and 50 yr old)
- understanding what causes change
- to have external validity need to measure in diff labs in diff cultures
What to be aware of as a researcher/consumer?
- personal bias
- generalization
- correlation & causation
- look for peer reviewed
