Deck 3: 3methods of Research in Infancy

Question 1

Why is it important for developmental psychologists to supplement their observations with parent interviews or questionnaires?

Answer 1

To gain an understanding of how representative their observations are and whether they can be generalized to infants' behavior in other situations

Question 2

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?

Answer 2

No, because SES is confounded with language. [In fact, follow-up studies by Fernald and colleagues have shown that SES and especially mothers' education are the critical factors in determining infants' language development]

Question 3

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

Answer 3

Recording pupil dilation or the location of infants' eye movements, their number, and their duration allows us to make more detailed inferences about attention allocation and information processing

Question 4

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

Question 5

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

Question 6

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

A) Habituation.
B) Natural preference.
C) Age-held-constant paradigm.
D) Operant conditioning.

Question 7

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

A) Infants can count.
B) Nothing, because the experiment lacks ecological validity.
C) Infants can discriminate between numbers that are doubled.
D) None of the above.

Question 8

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

A) Experiental age.
B) Conceptional age.
C) Postnatal age.
D) None of the above.

Question 9

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

A) A cross-sectional study.
B) A longitudinal study.
C) A quasi-experiment.
D) A case study.

Question 10

Professor Smith found that infants who looked longest to the new pictures at the time of the first assessment also looked the longest to the new pictures at the time of the second assessment. This is an example of

A) Consistency.
B) Face validity.
C) A cohort effect.
D) A natural experiment.

Question 11

Event-related potentials are

A) An example of a neurological assessment.
B) Sensitive to the timing of stimulus processing.
C) Noninvasive.
D) All of the above.

Question 12

For her new study, Professor Smart decides to measure infants' heart rate as well as their cortisol levels when they see pictures of snakes and butterflies. What is one of the advantages of including both of these measures?

A) They provide complementary information about infants' immediate and delayed responses to the stimuli.
B) They measure responses in the autonomous and the central nervous system.
C) They can easily be measured with the same device.
D) All of the above.

Question 13

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

A) A domestic diary.
B) An educational diary.
C) A scientific diary.
D) A longitudinal experiment.

Question 14

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

A) They raise interest in infant development.
B) They are objective and very detailed.
C) They often report developmental milestones retrospectively.
D) None of the above.

Question 15

Which of the following questions have to be considered when designing a new experiment with infants?

A) Should the experiment take place in a naturalistic or controlled setting?
B) Who should be the observer and what should be recorded?
C) When and for how long should observations be made?
D) All of the above.

Question 16

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

A) It requires observers to group descriptions into different categories based on their observations.
B) It forces observers to use a wide range of descriptions.
C) It forces observers to use the same descriptions for all observations.
D) All of the above.

Question 17

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

A) They emerge around the same time in infants' development.
B) They are active responses.
C) They require help from the experimenter or parent.
D) They provide limited information about infants' development.

Question 18

To study the effects of genes on infants' stress response, researchers can

A) Compare monozygotic and dizygotic twins when they are separated from their mother
B) Compare adopted and non-adopted infants when they meet a stranger
C) Compare siblings when they fight with each other
D) Compare infants' interactions when their mothers work full-time or when their mothers stay at home with them

Question 19

Which of the following statements is false?

A) The occipital lobe is primarily concerned with processing visual information.
B) The parietal lobe is primarily concerned with processing auditory information.
C) The frontal lobe is primarily concerned with higher level cognitive functions.
D) The cerebellum is not considered part of cortex.

Question 20

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

A) It measures oxygen levels in the brain.
B) Infants have to wear a high-density sensor array on their heads.
C) It provides excellent information about the time course of brain activity.
D) It requires injection of radioactive glucose into the blood.

Question 21

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'

A) Memory.
B) Motor abilities.
C) Recognition of their own body.
D) All of the above.

Question 22

In the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs), parents check off which words their infants understand or produce. Infants' performance is then compared to performance of a large sample of infants of the same age. The CDIs is an example of

A) A norm-referenced test.
B) A naturalistic observation.
C) A criterion-referenced test.
D) A baby biography.

Question 23

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

A) Internal validity.
B) Predictive validity.
C) Face validity.
D) External validity.

Question 24

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?

A) From the infants' point of view it is impossible to see the two toys.
B) The infants cannot ordinate their crawling direction well enough.
C) The infants forget where to crawl.
D) The tables discourage them from crawling to the toys.

Question 25

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:

A) A quasi-experiment design.
B) A parent diary.
C) A longitudinal design.
D) Cluster analysis.

Question 26

You have just become a lab manager at a prominent infant lab. The lab has some old data with 6-month-old infants that were collected 10 years ago. Your task is to recruit a new group of 6-month-olds to compare to the original group. What concerns do you have about this comparison?

A) Attrition.
B) Cohort effects.
C) Both a and b.
D) None of the above.

Question 27

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:

A) Expected attrition.
B) Unbiased sampling.
C) Normal distribution.
D) All of the above.

Question 28

During a lab meeting, your PI announces that she will start to study brain activity in the lab. The PI describes how the children will be able to do the brain recordings while sitting on their parent's lap and that all recordings will be done in a small room adjacent to your office. What method is your PI most likely talking about?

A) Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
B) Positron-emission tomography (PET).
C) Event-related potential (ERP).
D) It could be any of the above.

Question 29

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:

A) Familiarization.
B) Innateness.
C) Nasofacial response.
D)Natural preference.

Question 30

A 3-month-old and a 15-month-old infant both complete the norm-referenced Bayley Scales of Infant Development-II. The 3-month-old obtains a standardized score of 52; the 15-month-old obtains a standardized score of 51. Standardized scores have a mean of 50, and a standard deviation of 10. What do these results suggest about the children's performance?

A) A developmental delay in the 3-month-old infant.
B) A developmental delay in the 15-month-old infant.
C) Both children passed or failed mostly the same items on the assessment.
D) Both children seem to be developing adequately.

Question 31

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.

Question 32

What are the advantages and disadvantages of neurological assessments compared to behavioral assessments?

Question 33

Describe the conditioned head-turn procedure. How could it be used to study whether infants can discriminate between native and non-native speakers of their mother tongue?