Child development chapter 2

EXAM 1

Interviews

ex: tell me what you do when you get angry

Questionares

ex: check off all of the following that apply to you, “When I get angry I…”

Rating Scales

ex: Rate how often your child does the following behavior, always, sometimes, never..

Some younger children need pictures

Parental Reports problems

1) Often inaccurate (Don’t remember info correctly)

2) Often unreliable (Responses on two separate occasions don’t match)

3) Easily distorted (ex: remember your child’s develop as following the course of development as described in a book) (ex: remembering your baby as perfect, but not mentioning tantrums)

Why do these problems with parent reports occur?

1) Parents asked to report behavior that occurred in the past

2) Parents asked to describe behavior that is broadly described

3) Parents are not trained observers

How are these problems with parent reports partially solved?

1) Reporting immediate events

2) Training parents as observers

3) Training parents in recording of events

4) Ask specific questions

Problems with Child Reports

1) Easily influenced by the questions

2) less attentive than adults

3) Slower to respond than adults

4) Have more difficulty understanding questions than adults

5) Children less truthful than adults

6) tend to give single word answers to close ended questions

7) the younger the child, the more often difficulties arises

Peer and Teacher Reports

Use when the child or the child’s parents are not good sources of information

Laboratory observation

Bring child into a lab and watch them behave

Typically get involved in highly structured tasks

Use when interested in a few special behaviors

Naturalistic observation

Observe the child in a real world, natural setting

Use naturalistic observation when you want to understand how children in a social setting live and experience the setting

Observational data

Child is unaffected by the knowledge that they are being watched

ex: families act nicer to each other when they know they are being observed

behavioral distortion

changes in behavior due to an observer being present

Independent Variable

The variable that is CHANGED to see the effects on the other variable

Dependent Variable

The variable that is MEASURED to see any change as a result of manipulating the other variable

Control Group

Group that is not exposed to the IV

Random Assignment

Randomly assign people to an experimental group or control group

Experimental Group

control for variables that could influence the outcome of the experiment

Experiment pros

Can establish cause & effect

Experiment cons

They are artificially arranged

→May not generalize the real world

Random assignment cons

Sometimes impossible

ex: gender

sometimes unethical

ex: abuse

Field experiment

Investigator deliberately introduces a change in a non-laboratory setting

ex: introducing new language into a classroom

Natural experiment

Investigator measures the impact of a naturally occurring change on the child’s behavior in a real setting

Positive correlation

Both variables change in the same direction

>0 to 1

Negative correlation

Variables change i the opposite direction

-1 to <0

Longitudinal Design

Same individuals are tested repeatedly

Longitudinal design advantages

Can examine the stability of characteristics

Can examine individual differences

Long