W1 Conceptualising/Measuring Development Flashcards
What is development?
Systematic changes and continuities in an individual that occur
between conception and death.
What is developing?
It is all the gains, losses, neutral
changes and continuities.
What are the Challenges of Studying Development?
- Thinking Across Time and Space.
It branches many different disciplines like, Cultural, Social, Behavioural, Neural, Physiological, Genetic.
- Complex interactions.
Like Nature affects nurture as it is the basis of experience with the world, and nurture affect nature by changing epigenetics, how the gene is expressed.
What are the 5 environmental systems in the Bioecological model?
Microsystem
Mesosystem
Exosystem
Macrosystem
Chronosystem: changes occur in a timeframe
What is the Microsystem? Give examples.
The immediate physical and social environment. i.e. School, home, peer group.
What is the Mesosystem? Give examples.
It’s the linkages between microsystems. How the micro systems affect each other. i.e. Problems at home lead to decreased performance at school.
What is the Exosystem?
It’s the linkages between social system. Exo: outside.
The outside systems not directly connected to you, that affect you. Government changing educational laws, affecting schools, affecting you.
What is the Macrosystem?
It’s the larger cultural context.
i.e. Western/Tech.
Know memes, do/don’t do customs etc.
What are the aims of developmental psychology?
Describing, Explaining, Predicting, Optimising
Give an example for Describing.
Normal development and individual differences.
Give an example for Explaining.
Why Typical vs. individually different development.
Give an example for Explaining.
This factor will cause people to grow up with this attribute.
AFS (Alcohol Foetal Syndrome) and IQ.
What are the characteristics of a good theory?
Internally consistent (Logical),
Falsifiable,
Supported by data.
What are Theories and Models?
A theory is aimed at a generalized statement aimed at explaining a phenomenon.
A model, on the other hand, is a purposeful representation of reality.
What are the data collection techniques?
Reporting,
Behavioural Observations,
Neural / Physiological / Biological Measures.
What are the pros/cons of Reporting?
+ Data collection with large groups
+ Ability to collect many measures
- Cannot be used with infants, young children, or
those with reading or language difficulties - Difficult to equate questions across age groups
- Self-presentation concerns (children might answer
strategically instead of honestly)
What are the pros/cons of natural Behavioural Observations?
+ Reflects behavior in the real world
+ Helpful for generating research questions and theories
- Difficult to identify causation
- Behaviours of interest might occur rarely
- Children may behave differently when being observed
- Observations can be biased
What is Bias in Observation?
Early primatology
research focused on
male-dominated troops
What is Naturalistic Observation vs Structured Observation?
Observing behaviour in natural
settings (e.g., at home or at school) vs Creating special conditions to elicit
behaviours of interest
What are the pros/cons of Structured Behavioural Observations?
+ More control, less noise
+ Allows for more direct comparisons between children
- Concerns about whether behaviours in controlled
environments will generalise to natural settings
What are the pros/cons of Neural / Physiological / Biological Measures?
+ Hard to fake (or strategically change)
+ Don’t require an understanding of language or subject to do complex behaviours
- Can be difficult to interpret (e.g., does increased heart rate reflect anger or excitement?)
What did the Hubbard and colleagues (2002) study cover?
Used all 3 collection methods including 2 types of report, teacher and self-report.
Children who showed more “hot” aggression in classroom showed more anger in task.
Difference was more pronounced in skin conductance and non-verbal behaviour
than self-report and heart rate
What are the Research Methods?
Case studies, Correlational studies, Experiments, Meta-Analyses.
What is a case study?
In-depth examination of an individual or small
number of individuals.
+ Rich information about complex or rare aspects of development
- Often difficult to generalize findings to other situations or groups
What are Correlational good/bad for?
+ Can be used when it is unethical to manipulate variables of interest (e.g.,
studying the impact of divorce on cognitive development)
+ Allows for multiple factors to be examined
- Cannot establish a causal relationship
- Directionality problem (Does X cause Y or vice versa?)
- Third variable problem (Is some other factor driving the correlation?)
What are Experiments?
A variable is manipulated in order to see what
effect this has on the measured variable
• Independent variable (manipulated)
• Dependent variable (measured)
Three critical features of true experiments:
• Random assignment
• Manipulation of an independent variable
• Experimental controls
What are the pros/cons of experiments?
Strengths \+ Can establish cause and effect \+ Allows for careful controls Limitations - Concerns about generalizability to real world conditions - Interventions raise ethical concerns
What are Meta-Analyses?
Synthesising
the results of many different studies
What are the Developmental Research Designs?
Cross-Sectional Designs, Longitudinal Designs, Sequential Designs
What is a Cross-Sectional Design? What are the pros/cons?
Compare the performances of people of different
cohorts (same year or range of years)
+ Quick and easy to conduct (don’t have to wait for
people to age)
Limitations
- Cannot reveal developmental change and constancy
within individuals
- Age effects and cohort effects are confounded
What is a Longitudinal Design? What are the pros/cons?
Assess one group of the same individuals
repeatedly over time • E.g., studying the a cohort of children
from birth to 8 years of age
Strength \+ Allow researchers to follow specific developmental trajectories Limitations - Costly and time consuming - Some participants are not studied at each time point - Potential issues with repeated testing - Are results specific to the cohort?
What is a Microgenetic design?
Microgenetic designs measure the same individual or group repeatedly in
a relatively small timespan.
Subcategory of longitudinal
What is a Sequential Design? What are the pros/cons?
Combine the cross-sectional and longitudinal designs
• E.g., studying the development of memory
longitudinally in different age groups
Strengths \+ Can reveal age effects, cohort effects, and time-of-measurement effects (the effects of specific historical events) Limitations - Costly and time consuming - Potential issues with repeated testing
Explain the concept of Reliability
Would similar results be observed if the study were repeated?
Explain the concept of Validity
Are you sure your measuring what you think you’re measuring?
Explain the concept of Replicability
Do other labs find the same result?
What is Test-retest reliability?
If you give the same
task/test/measure to the same group of
participants, do participants perform similarly
each time?
What is Interrater reliability?
Do different researchers get
the same results when they code (get conslusions from) the same
data?
What is Internal validity?
Are changes in the dependent variable driven by
different levels of the independent or extraneous influences?
• Did meditation improve memory, or was it just extra attention
from the teacher?
What is External validity?
Do the results generalize to other populations and
situations?
What is Ecological validity?
Do the results generalize to real-world settings
(situations where the behaviours of interest would naturally occur)?
What is the File-drawer problem in Replicability?
It can be tempting for researchers to re-run the same experiment with minor tweaks until they get the results they expect • It can be more difficult to publish studies that fail to show an effect • Researchers might put studies revealing null effects into the file drawer
