Developmental psychology

What are the core ethical principles of the BPS and APA?

Informed Consent

Protection from Harm

Right to Withdraw

Debriefing

Confidentiality

What is the key tension in modern ethical guidelines?

The balance between scientific value and participant welfare.

Research must have clear scientific merit but also ensure minimal harm to participants

What are the future ethical challenges in research?

Online and Digital Research: New questions around privacy, consent, and data security arise, especially for children.

Cross-Cultural Research: Researchers must respect local norms while still upholding ethical standards, ensuring no imposition of external standards.

What key lesson is learned from historical unethical studies?

The tension between pursuing knowledge and the responsibility to protect participants.

Modern ethics prioritize participant well-being while still allowing research to progress.

What is the role of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and ethics committees?

IRBs and ethics committees review research proposals to ensure ethical standards are met.

They scrutinize studies for potential risks, ensuring harm is justified by scientific benefit.

What are the core ethical principles in psychology research today?

Informed Consent: Participants must fully understand the study's nature, procedures, and risks.

Protection from Harm: Physical and psychological distress must be minimized.

Right to Withdraw: Participants can leave the study at any time without penalty.

Debriefing: Full explanation of the study's purpose and methods, especially if deception was used.

Confidentiality: Data must be anonymized and secured.

How has the ethical approach evolved based on historical studies?

Milgram Study: No consent and extreme stress → Modern Solution: Mandatory debriefing and IRB review.

Stanford Prison Study: Unchecked harm → Modern Solution: Independent monitoring.

Little Albert: Induced phobia → Modern Solution: Prohibited harm to children.

Key Trend: From "ends justify the means" to participant-centered ethics.

What role do Parents play in developmental research?

Power dynamics can affect children's decision to participate (e.g., children may feel obligated to obey a parent's wishes to participate).

Why is Vulnerability a concern in developmental research?

Children may not fully understand their withdrawal rights.

They may also struggle to express distress clearly, making it harder for researchers to identify discomfort.

What is Informed Assent in developmental research?

Children need age-appropriate explanations about the study (e.g., using visuals, stories).

It ensures they have a basic understanding before participating.

What ethical legacy did Bain et al. (1958)'s study leave?

Reinforced the need for ethical standards tailored to children's cognitive and emotional development.

How did Bain et al. (1958)'s study contribute to psychology and ethics?

Highlighted the importance of understanding developmental psychology when evaluating risk, consent, and participation of children in research.

Provided data on child behavior under stress, which was used to improve safety designs in home appliances.

Emphasized the need for clear ethical standards, including:

Age-appropriate assent procedures.

Immediate intervention to prevent distress.

Transparent parental consent.

Anonymization of data and child protection.

What are the weaknesses and ethical concerns of Bain et al. (1958)'s study?

Extreme psychological harm: Children were deliberately placed in distressing, panic-inducing situations.

Lack of informed consent: No informed consent from the child, and questionable parental consent.

Lack of assent: Children were too young to understand or agree to participate.

Violation of autonomy: Children had no control over the situation, and researchers decided when to intervene.

Confidentiality breaches: Full personal data was collected, which is unethical by modern standards.

Absence of formal ethics review: Raised concerns about the historical lack of ethical oversight in research.

What are the strengths of Bain et al. (1958)'s study?

Addressed a real-world safety issue with significant public health implications.

Large sample size with rich behavioral data, including qualitative observations and film evidence.

Highlighted developmental variability in problem-solving, emotional regulation, and stress responses in early childhood.

What were the key findings from Bain et al. (1958)'s study?

Inaction (24%):

Some sat silently for up to 15 minutes.

Purposeful Escape Attempts (39%):

Violent Action / Panic (37%):

Age and physical size were positively correlated with successful escape attempts.

How did Bain et al. (1958) conduct their experiment?

Children played with a guardian and were lured into a playhouse via cartoon entertainment.

The door was sealed, and the interior was darkened and soundproofed.

Researchers observed, releasing the child based on perceived distress or escape effort.

Recorded data: Vocalizations, actions, and film footage were used to track behavior.

What was the aim of Bain et al. (1958)'s study?

To investigate how young children react when trapped in enclosures resembling refrigerators.

The goal was to inform the design of safer refrigerator release mechanisms and reduce child fatalities from accidental entrapment.

The study focused on observing real behavior under stress, not simulated conditions.

What type of study was Bain et al. (1958)'s "Fridge Experiment"?

Applied field study in developmental psychology and safety engineering. It involved young children (ages 2-5) to test behavioral responses in confined spaces.

What key idea did Watson & Rayner's Little Albert experiment demonstrate about emotional development?

The experiment demonstrated that emotional responses, such as fear, can be classically conditioned in children, supporting behaviorist theories of emotional development (Watson & Rayner, 1920).

What was the main procedure used in the Little Albert study?

Baby Albert was conditioned to fear a white rat by repeatedly pairing its presence with a loud, frightening noise. Eventually, Albert displayed fear of the rat alone, indicating that fear can be learned through association (Watson & Rayner, 1920).

How did the Little Albert experiment challenge earlier views of emotion?

It challenged the idea that emotions are purely innate by showing that they could be shaped through environmental conditioning, supporting the behaviorist idea of the mind as a "blank slate" or tabula rasa (Watson, 1920).

What were the main ethical and methodological criticisms of the Little Albert study?

• psychological harm to a child

• without informed consent

• no attempts to reverse the conditioned fear

• lacked methodological rigor and generalisability due to being a single-case study (Beck et al., 2009).

What lasting contribution did the Little Albert experiment make to psychology?

It significantly influenced early behaviorist views by demonstrating that environmental factors play a critical role in shaping emotional development, helping shift focus away from nativist explanations of emotion (Watson & Rayner, 1920).

What limitation of the Little Albert experiment is highlighted by Bounton (2007)?

It ignores evolutionary factors

What did Seligman argue about the acquisition of phobias in 1971?

Phobias of things that have been a source of danger in the past are more easily acquired as this is adaptive.

What is biological preparedness in the context of phobias?

It refers to the innate predisposition to acquire certain fears.

What was the main finding of Harlow's monkey studies on attachment?

Harlow found that infant monkeys preferred a soft cloth surrogate mother over a wire mother that provided food, highlighting the importance of emotional comfort in attachment (Harlow, 1958).

How did Harlow's findings challenge behaviourist theories of attachment?

Attachment is not solely based on food provision, as behaviourists claimed, but also on the need for emotional security and comfort (Harlow, 1958).

What theoretical impact did Harlow's study have on developmental psychology?

Harlow's work significantly influenced Bowlby's attachment theory by emphasizing the importance of affectionate bonds in early development (Bowlby, 1969).

What are the key ethical concerns associated with Harlow's monkey studies?

The studies subjected monkeys to severe psychological distress, raising concerns about cruelty and the ethics of using animals in such research (Berk, 2013).

What are the main criticisms of generalising Harlow's findings to humans?

Critics argue that findings from rhesus monkeys may not fully apply to human attachment processes due to differences in cognitive and social development (Berk, 2013).

What lasting contribution did Harlow's research make to psychology and childcare?

It shifted focus toward the emotional needs of infants, influencing both psychological theory and modern childcare practices that stress the importance of affection and security (Harlow, 1958; Bowlby, 1969).

What type of study was Harlow's (1958) experiment?

Laboratory experiment in developmental and comparative psychology.

Involved non-human primates (rhesus macaques), which are often used to model human infant behavior due to genetic and behavioral similarities.

What was Harlow's (1958) key aim in his study on infant attachment?

To explore the mechanisms of attachment.

What two factors did Harlow investigate in relation to infant attachment?

Basic survival needs (food) and emotional comfort (contact).

Which behaviorist claims did Harlow aim to challenge in his study?

The claims that attachment is formed solely through conditioning via nourishment.

What year did Harlow conduct his experiment on infant attachment?

1958

What type of subjects were used in Harlow's experiment?

Infant monkeys separated from their biological mothers within hours of birth.

What were the two groups of mothers in Harlow's experiment?

Wire mesh mother (provided milk) and cloth-covered mother (provided no food, but tactile comfort).

What did the monkeys overwhelmingly prefer in Harlow's experiment?

To cling to the cloth mother, even when the wire mother provided food.

What behavior did monkeys exhibit in stress-inducing situations in Harlow's experiment?

They sought reassurance from the cloth mother.

What were the effects on monkeys raised only with the wire mother?

They showed distressed, rocking behavior and lacked emotional regulation.

Long-term effects of Harlow's research

Many monkeys failed to form normal social or sexual relationships.

Some became emotionally disturbed and had to be euthanized.

Raises moral questions: If monkeys are used because of their similarity to humans, their suffering should be treated with equal concern

What ethical legacy did Harlow's (1958) study leave?

Prompted the development of modern animal research ethics, including:

Use of ethics committees (e.g., IACUC) for animal welfare review.

Move toward non-invasive observational methods when possible.

Highlights the enduring tension in psychology between scientific benefit and moral cost, especially in animal research.

What did Bandura's Bobo doll experiment demonstrate about how children learn behavior?

It showed that children learn aggressive behaviors through observational learning by imitating adults, even without direct reinforcement or punishment (Bandura, 1961)

What theory did Bandura develop as a result of his Bobo doll study?

Social Learning Theory, which emphasizes the roles of attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation in learning from observed behaviors (Bandura, 1977).

What aspect of developmental psychology did Bandura's study shift focus toward?

The role of social modeling and cognitive processes in learning, moving beyond behaviorist approaches focused only on reinforcement (Bandura, 1977).

What strengths did Bandura's Bobo doll experiment offer to psychological research?

The study provided empirical support for social learning theory and underscored the influence of media and adult modeling on children's behavior (Anderson & Dill, 2000).

What are the key criticisms of Bandura's Bobo doll experiment?

The artificial lab setting limits ecological validity, and the study focused on short-term behavior imitation rather than long-term effects (Bandura et al., 1961).

How did Bandura's research contribute to developmental psychology?

It introduced a cognitive-behavioral perspective, leading to further research into modeling, self-efficacy, and how internal cognitive processes influence learning (Bandura, 1977).

What was the key aim of Bandura et al.'s (1961) study?

To explore whether children learn aggressive behavior through observational learning.

What idea did Bandura et al.'s (1961) study challenge?

The behaviorist idea that all learning comes from direct reinforcement.

Who conducted the Bobo Doll experiment?

Bandura et al. (1961)

How many participants were in the Bobo Doll experiment?

72 children

What age range did the participants in the Bobo Doll experiment fall into?

3-6 years

What were the three conditions in the Bobo Doll experiment?

Children observed a model behave aggressively, non-aggressively, or had no model (control group).

What procedure was used to frustrate the children in the Bobo Doll experiment?

Attractive toys were taken away from them.

What did the children play with after being frustrated in the Bobo Doll experiment?

A Bobo doll and other toys.

What is a strength of Bandura et al.'s (1961) study related to the research setting?

Controlled lab setting: Allowed researchers to manipulate variables and demonstrate causal relationships.

What design did Bandura et al. (1961) use to minimize individual differences?

Matched design: Minimized individual differences in baseline aggression.

What theory did Bandura et al.'s (1961) study provide pioneering support for?

Supported the idea that children learn through observation, imitation, and modeling.

What aspect of child behavior did Bandura et al.'s (1961) study highlight?

Highlighted the importance of role models in shaping child behavior.

What is a weakness related to psychological harm in Bandura et al.'s (1961) study?

Children were exposed to aggressive behavior, potentially affecting their attitudes toward violence.

What ethical concern arises regarding informed consent in Bandura et al.'s (1961) study?

Concerns about whether parents were fully informed and whether children, as minors, could give informed assent.

What is a debriefing issue in Bandura et al.'s (1961) study?

No clear evidence that children were told the aggression was staged or wrong.

What are demand characteristics in the context of Bandura et al.'s (1961) study?

The Bobo doll was designed to be hit, which may have influenced children to behave aggressively.

What is a concern regarding ecological validity in Bandura et al.'s (1961) study?

Real-life aggression may differ from the simple act of hitting an inflatable toy.

What ethical legacy did Bandura et al.'s (1961) study leave?

Today, similar studies would require:

Explicit parental consent

Post-study debriefing

Justification scientific value outweighs potential harm.

Raised concerns about children's autonomy and their ability to understand participation