Deck 1: Section 1: An Introduction to Child Development

Question 1

Imagine that a researcher is interested in the extent to which parents help children when children are faced with a difficult task. Which data collection context would the researcher choose, and why? Be sure to explain why the other contexts would not be appropriate.

Answer 1

Not Answer

Question 2

Describe in detail four differences between the sociocultural context of a child growing up in rural Manitoba on a family farm and the sociocultural context of a child growing up in urban Toronto in a high-rise apartment. How might these differences affect the development of these children?

Answer 2

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Question 3

Describe the biological and environmental factors that are likely to be involved in the development of intelligence. In the discussion, be sure to consider these questions: Are there any biological factors that are unaffected by environment (that is, that exert their influence regardless of the environment)? Are there any environmental factors that are unaffected by biology (that is, that exert their influence regardless of biology)? In contrast, are there biological factors that can exert influence only in particular environments? Are there environmental factors that can exert influence only when particular biological characteristics are present?

Answer 3

Not Answer

Question 4

Describe two advantages and two limitations of using interviews with children to examine their parents' disciplining practices.

Question 5

Imagine that a researcher is interested in differences between boys' and girls' television-viewing habits. State a hypothesis that the researcher might test, and describe the method the researcher would use. Then answer these questions: (1) Why would that particular method be suited to the hypothesis? (2) What issues would the researcher need to consider in terms of reliability and validity?

Question 6

Using information about the interaction between nature and nurture and about children's active participation in their own development, discuss the meaning of the statement: "Children grow up in spite of their parents." Do you agree or disagree with the statement? Why?

Question 7

The managers at a charitable organization are trying to decide how to spend money in order to have the largest impact on the future mental health of children in poverty. They know that children who spend time in poverty are more likely than other children to develop mental health problems in adolescence. Since the organization's funds are limited, they can assist only a small group of families to escape poverty. Therefore, they would like to know whether the age that the child is in poverty or the length of time the child is in poverty more heavily impacts the likelihood of developing mental health problems in adolescence. Design a study to examine this issue. What evidence would be needed to advise the managers at this charity that they should help younger children rather than older children? To advise them to help children who have been in poverty a long time rather than children who have been poor a shorter time?

Question 8

The text describes several reasons for the importance of studying child development. Why is studying child development of interest or importance to you personally?

Question 9

Choose three of the following philosophers: Aristotle, Locke, Plato, and Rousseau. For the philosophers in each pair (with three philosophers, you'll be able to create three pairs: A with B, B with C, and A with
C), describe one similarity and one difference between the two philosophers.

Question 10

A group of researchers is interested in children's reactions when they are faced with difficult tasks. Describe at least one advantage and one disadvantage of each of these contexts for gathering data: interview, naturalistic observation, structured observation.

Question 11

Describe the results of Werner's Kauai study in terms of the effect of forming a close relationship with an adult outside the family on the outcomes for children who encountered prenatal or birth challenges. Are there any limitations on the ability to generalize from this study to other children who encountered prenatal or birth challenges? Or on the ability to generalize from this study to children in other parts of the United States or other parts of the world?

Question 12

Explain what effortful attention is and describe its components. Explain how the experience of being in school may be different for a child with poor effortful attention than for a child with strong effortful attention.

Question 13

Katie and Natasha are sisters. Natasha has a lot of friends and is well-liked by her peers. Katie, in contrast, has few friends and is constantly the target of her peers' teasing. Using the four factors Scarr identified as involved in differences among siblings, describe why these sisters might be so different when it comes to their peer relations. For each of the four factors, provide a specific example.

Question 14

What do developmental psychologists mean when they say that children play an active role in their own development? Provide a detailed example of this concept.

Question 15

Describe the results of Werner's Kauai study in terms of how children who encountered prenatal or birth challenges fared in different environments. What are the implications of these results for the nature‒nurture question? What kind of advice should be given to a hospital that deals with children born prematurely or with biological challenges?

Question 16

Researchers routinely decide on the optimum context in which to measure their variables of interest. Describe one variable for which a structured interview would be the ideal methodology, and explain why other methodologies would be unsuitable. Do the same for a variable for which naturalistic observation would be ideally suited and for a variable for which structured observation would be ideally suited.

Question 17

A researcher is interested in the impact of a new morality education program on children's aggression. To test the effectiveness of the program, the researcher chooses a group of elementary school children who have had problems with aggression. Each week for 6 months, the participating children spend an hour with a school psychologist who teaches them the morality program. At the beginning and at the end of the 6 months, their classroom teachers rate each child's level of aggression. The researcher determines that the training program has been effective, as there has been a decrease in aggression following the program. Describe three potential sources of invalidity.

Question 18

Choose a developmental progression (e.g., learning to do puzzles, beginning to talk, going from crawling to walking) that may appear at first glance to be discontinuous. Describe in what ways the progression is continuous and in what ways it is discontinuous. From what perspective would it look continuous, and from what perspective would it appear discontinuous?

Question 19

Think about the different beliefs about intelligence that individuals can hold. Imagine that a teacher were asked by the school principal to try to help children whose beliefs about intelligence were interfering with their school achievement. How would the teacher decide which children to select for the intervention, what would her intervention be, and what effect would she hope that her intervention would have?

Question 20

Considering the research on child testimony discussed in the text, what instructions should be given to an interviewer who is preparing to interview a young child to ensure the most accurate testimony possible? Make sure the instructions are sufficiently detailed.

Question 21

Describe one advantage and one disadvantage of each of these designs: (a) cross-sectional, (b) longitudinal, and (c) microgenetic.

Question 22

Suppose a journal article indicated that there is a strong positive correlation between the number of friends a child has and a child's level of school satisfaction (i.e., how much a child likes school). Would that association be correlation or causation? Make an argument that the association is a causal one, being sure to explain the direction of causation. Then make an argument that the association is merely correlational, being sure to explain other potential sources of the association.

Question 23

Define random assignment and provide an example of a study that would use random assignment. Why is random assignment considered to play a crucial role in an experimenter's ability to demonstrate cause and effect?

Question 24

Imagine that a researcher is interested in developmental changes in children's ability to cooperate when working on school projects together. Briefly describe how the researcher could examine this issue using each of these designs: (a) cross-sectional, (b) longitudinal, and (c) microgenetic. For each design, also indicate what a likely research question would be.

Question 25

A researcher is interested in the impact of a new type of training diaper on the age at which toddlers become potty-trained. The researcher plans to split a group of 100 toddlers into two groups-in one group, members will wear the new training diapers until they are potty-trained, and in the other, members will wear their usual diapers. Answer these questions about this study: (1) What is the researcher's hypothesis? (2) How should the researcher split the 100 toddlers into two groups? (3) Which group is the experimental group, and which is the control group? (4) What is the independent variable? (5) What is the dependent variable? (6) What results will the researcher need in order to make a conclusion about the effectiveness of the new training diaper? (7) Will the researcher be able to conclude that there is a cause-and-effect association? Why or why not?