Week 3 - Myth of Normative Development

Question 1

What is the myth of Normative Development?

Answer 1

There needs to be diversity in:
- Participant samples
- Theorists
- Researchers within developmental psychology (and beyond)

Question 2

What are descriptive norms?

Answer 2

• Determine what ‘‘is’’
• What is perceived as typical, common, or normal
• e.g. ‘‘Lecturers talk a lot in taught sessions

Question 3

What are injunctive norms?

Answer 3

• Determine what ‘‘ought to be’’ (what should be)
• What is perceived as appropriate, desirable, or normative
• e.g. ‘‘students ought to attend lectures’’

Question 4

Sometimes the norms clash…

Answer 4

• We may subjectively believe that lecturers talking a lot in taught sessions is what happens but not what should happen
• We may believe that most students should attend taught sessions but
  also that the reality is that most do not

Question 5

Critically norms are GROUP DEPENDENT

Answer 5

• Norms on what is commonly done and what should be done very accross groups
• How we eat may depend on culture (cutlery, chopsticks, use of hands)
• e.g. in many Nordic countries, wearing bathing suits in a sauna or steam room is frowed upon
• There are also generational ideological differences in views of what is appropriate or should be done (e.g. subcultures within a broader culture)

Question 6

What is a key problem

Answer 6

• '’Much of the ‘foundational’ research on which many subfields rely on are North American, Western European, White, English-speaking, monolingual, middle-class participants’’
• '’and findings based on this group have come to define the norms of development’’

Question 7

The theory is also designed by people from those same cultural context

Answer 7

• The research is carrier out by researchers from those same groups
• Therefore, universal claims have been culturally ignorant (detached from socio-cultural context

Question 8

Evidence

Answer 8

• Limited research
• BUT… there is substantial evidence for differences between western educated industrialised communities and non-western population
• Cross-cultural variation in child socialisation (Keller, 2007, Keller and Kärtner, 2013, Kärtner, 2015)

= Kind of task parents engage their infants in (Lancy et al., 2010(Keller, 2007, Keller and Kärtner, 2013, Kärtner, 2015)

• Kind of task parents engage their infants in (Lancy et al., 2010)
• Amount of time children spend with non-parental caregivers and peers (Gaskins, 2006, LeVine, 1980)
• Social needs vary across cultures and with them, the practices.

Question 9

What is normative development

Answer 9

the typical pattern of development that most people within a population experience

Question 10

What is Open Science

Answer 10

the typical pattern of development that most people within a population experience