W2 - Developmental Psychology

Assent

When minor participants are asked to indicate their willingness to participate in a study. This is usually obtained from participants who are at least 7 years old, in addition to parent or guardian consent.

Attrition

When a participant drops out, or fails to complete, all parts of a study.

Bidirectional relations

When one variable is likely both cause and consequence of another variable.

Cohort effects

When research findings differ for participants of the same age tested at different points in historical time.

Cross-sectional research

A research design used to examine behavior in participants of different ages who are tested at the same point in time.

Dishabituation

When participants demonstrated increased attention (through looking or listening behavior) to a new stimulus after having been habituated to a different stimulus.

Elicited imitation

A behavioral method used to examine recall memory in infants and young children.

Event-related potentials (ERP)

The recording of participant brain activity using a stretchy cap with small electrodes or sensors as participants engage in a particular task (commonly viewing photographs or listening to auditory stimuli).

Habituation

When participants demonstrated decreased attention (through looking or listening behavior) to repeatedly-presented stimuli.

Informed consent

The process of getting permission from adults for themselves and their children to take part in research.

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

A committee that reviews and approves research procedures involving human participants and animal subjects to ensure that the research is conducted in accordance with federal, institutional, and ethical guidelines.

Interview techniques

A research method in which participants are asked to report on their experiences using language, commonly by engaging in conversation with a researcher (participants may also be asked to record their responses in writing).

Involuntary or obligatory responses

Behaviors in which individuals engage that do not require much conscious thought or effort.

Longitudinal research

A research design used to examine behavior in the same participants over short (months) or long (decades) periods of time.

Motor control

The use of thinking to direct muscles and limbs to perform a desired action.

Object permanence

The understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be directly observed (e.g., that a pen continues to exist even when it is hidden under a piece of paper).

Practice effect

When participants get better at a task over time by “practicing” it through repeated assessments instead of due to actual developmental change (practice effects can be particularly problematic in longitudinal and sequential research designs).

Psychophysiological responses

Recording of biological measures (such as heart rate and hormone levels) and neurological responses (such as brain activity) that may be associated with observable behaviors.

Recall memory

The process of remembering discrete episodes or events from the past, including encoding, consolidation and storage, and retrieval.

Research design

The strategy (or “blueprint”) for deciding how to collect and analyze research information.

Research methods

The specific tools and techniques used by researchers to collect information.

Sequential research designs

A research design that includes elements of cross-sectional and longitudinal research designs. Similar to cross-sectional designs, sequential research designs include participants of different ages within one study; similar to longitudinal designs, participants of different ages are followed over time.

Solidity principle

The idea that two solid masses should not be able to move through one another.

Verbal report paradigms

Research methods that require participants to report on their experiences, thoughts, feelings, etc., using language.

Vignette

A short story that presents a situation that participants are asked to respond to.

Violation of expectation paradigm

A research method in which infants are expected to respond in a particular way because one of two conditions violates or goes against what they should expect based on their everyday experiences (e.g., it violates our expectations that Wile E. Coyote runs off a cliff but does not immediately fall to the ground below).

Voluntary responses

Behaviors that a person has control over and completes by choice.

what is developmental psychology

studies human growth and change across the lifestyle

what is the most researched developmental period?

earlier years

correlational designs

examine whether variables are related to one another

correlation coefficient

the direction and strength of a correlation represented by a statistic/numerical value

what problems are correlational designs subject to?

direction of causation and third variable problems

experimental designs

relies on random assignment, can avoid correlation problems

what is the problem with experimental designs

not always feasible, ethical or appropriate

what are some approaches to measuring variables

interviews, questionnaires, observations, naturalistic observations, structured observation, eye tracking.

what is naturalistic observations

examination of ongoing behaviour in an environment NOT controlled by the researcher

what is the strength of naturalistic observations?

ecologically valid information

what are the weaknesses of naturalistic observations

events of interest may not happen often; little data is collected, or collection takes very long

structured observations

examination of behaviour in a controlled environment

what is the strength of structured observations

environment is identical for all participants

what is the weakness of structured observations

may lack external validity

what are cohort effects

group differences due to cohort which distort comparisons (e.g. children born during pandemic/kids born before in a verbal test)