Exam 3: 3methods of Research in Infancy

The same lab is conducting a longitudinal study with assessments at 6, 18, and 30 months. The study goal is to follow a total of 50 infants over the time period. However, when checking the study log you find that already 60 infants were assessed at age 6 months. The graduate student tells you that more infants were recruited because of:

What are the positive results of early baby biographies such as the one by Charles Darwin?

A research study found that Spanish-learning infants living in the United States and growing up in low socioeconomic environments were slower and less efficient in understanding spoken language than English-learning infants living in the United States and growing up in middle to high socioeconomic environments. Is it correct to infer that these findings suggest that Spanish is a more difficult language for infants to learn than English? Why or why not?

Professor Johnson is interested in studying the impact of diaper use on infants' sleeping behavior. He wants to know if the use of disposable diapers allows infants to sleep through the night at an earlier age. Discuss the difficulties of answering Professor Johnson's question.

Finally, Professor Smith tested the same full-term and pre-term infants again at 9 months of age. This time he showed them pictures with 12 objects repeatedly until their looking times decreased by 50% and then showed them new pictures with 18 objects. This is an example of

You decide that you want to study the relation between early experiences and later outcomes. For this study, you decide to monitor language development via a parent-questionnaire at age 12 months to see if it would predict the child's developmental outcomes at age 3 years. To study this question you need to use:

Professor Smith then tested a group of 8-month-old infants who were born two months before their due dates. This group matched the full-term 6-month-old infants he previously tested in

When Professor Martin tests whether an infant can already sit up alone and then also asks the primary caregiver whether his or her child can master this skill, Professor Martin ensures that his measure of the infant's ability to sit has

Professor Rovee-Collier and colleagues conditioned infants to kick their feet to make a mobile move. They used this operant conditioning paradigm to test infants'

Compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of cross-sectional and longitudinal experimental designs for studying infant development.

Terry is a research assistant in Professor Samuel's laboratory. He is running a study in which 10-month-old crawling infants are shown a fascinating colorful music box and a plain block being placed on separate tables. They are then allowed to crawl to one of the two tables to indicate their toy choice. Terry notices that infants randomly choose between the two tables. What could be the reason for the infants' failure to choose the more fascinating toy?

Which of the following statements about positron-emission tomography is true?

Charles Darwin was not only a pioneer in documenting evolutionary processes; he also took detailed notes of his first son and published them. This is an example of

In his experiment, Professor Smith found that infants looked longer to the pictures with 16 objects. What can he infer from these findings?

Describe one ethical concern with regard to research with infants and how it can be addressed.

What do reaching and crawling have in common when they are used as dependent variables in research studies?

Professor Smith showed a group of full-term 6-month-old infants different pictures of eight objects until their looking times decreased by 50%. He then showed them other pictures with 16 objects. This is an example of

Which of the following statements is not true about the Q-sort technique?

A number of studies on face perception have shown that within the first few months of life infants prefer to look at faces of their own race, female faces, and at attractive over unattractive faces. This is an example of:

How is eye tracking superior to habituation or preferential looking paradigms?