Wk 2 Methods and Models

Question 1

What are Baltes’ 3 types of influences on development?

Answer 1

1. Normative age-graded influences. 2. Normative, history-graded influences. 3. Non-normative life events

Question 2

According to a life-span perspective development is …

Answer 2

1. Lifelong
2. Multidimensional
3. Multidirectional
4. Plastics
5. Multidisciplinary
6. Contextual

Question 3

What are four theoretical approaches in development?

Answer 3

Psychoanalytic, cognitive theories, socio-cultural theories, social learning theories

Question 4

What is a history-graded influence?

Answer 4

Historical circumstances which can impact your culture or genes.

Question 5

What makes kids good at learning?

Answer 5

They try everything and don’t sit still. This makes them more likely to find novel approaches to problems.

Question 6

What are the differences between lab and naturalistic observation?

Answer 6

The lab is controlled, but a weird environment for kids. And also biased towards higher educated families.

Naturalistic is more randomly assigned, and real-world. More representative.

Question 7

What is a potential issue when using self-report on parents?

Answer 7

Parents want to present their children in a positive light. Eg. They often overreport the amount of words their child knows.

Question 8

What is a problem with kids who do things early?

Answer 8

People in our culture want to assume that they will continue to do those things with age. But it may not be the case that they are necessarily set on an advanced trajectory.

Question 9

What are the types of ‘passive’ measures?

Answer 9

Observation
Self-report
Standardised tests
Case study

Question 10

What is the general approach to testing children on complex ideas?

Answer 10

Taking adult concepts and reducing them to the most simple components which can be tested

Question 11

What is dishabituation?

Answer 11

When you change a pattern of exposure, a spike in looking/interest will show that children can distinguish two types of stimulus. This gives insight into how they build categories of things in the world.

Question 12

What are the two looking preferences in children?

Answer 12

Novelty and familiarity.

Question 13

How do these preferences change?

Answer 13

Kids start with no preferences; then familiarity; then novelty. Kids show all three patterns in an experiment (Time). This reflects how they explore the environment, starting with familiarity (Age). Complexity is a U shaped curve (ideal range of complexity for attention)

Question 14

What are more active measures of children?

Answer 14

Looking preferences, dishabituation, and testing their capabilities.

Question 15

What are physiological measures?

Answer 15

EEG
Neuroimaging
Body states
Movements and reactions

Question 16

What are the pros and cons of physiological measures?

Answer 16

Pros: tangible measurements which can implicate mechanisms for behaviour
Cons: have to get them to sit still, difficult to draw direct links between behaviour and cognitions

Question 17

How do you modify neuroimaging measures for children?

Answer 17

Habituate them to the sound and give them practice in a mock scanner

Question 18

How do you modify EEG for children?

Answer 18

Just make sure they’re happy? .. not much to do.

Question 19

How do you modify body states measures?

Answer 19

Put sensors on low-controlled limbs, and act fast (if they perceive the sensors they will not be happy)

Question 20

What are problems with X-S designs?

Answer 20

Testing different ages, but also they are different people. So we don’t know how age affected those people. A longitudinal study would directly show that.

Question 21

What are problems with Longitudinal studies?

Answer 21

Test-wise ness, and selective attrition (dropout), history influences, cost

Question 22

What is a Time-Lag design?

Answer 22

A combination of X-S and L designs. Provides overlapping data, able to compare age across cohorts and cohort differences.