Downloaded 13 times
![• The rules of research state that ‘deception is acceptable only if the
researcher can show that it has a clear, specific methodological
purpose, and . . . [they] should use it only to the minimum degree
necessary’ (Neuman, 2007, p. 49).
• Researchers using deception must obtain informed consent from
their participants (describing the fundamental details of the research
study), make use of deception safely and always debrief the
participants afterwards to explain the use of the deception and the
purposes for which it was used (Neuman, 2007).](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/developmentalpsychologylecture1-240330165910-8bb4259b/75/developmental-psychology-lecture-1-pptx-45-2048.jpg)
More Related Content
Similar to developmental psychology lecture 1.pptx .
developmental psychology lecture 1.pptx .
- 1.
- 2. Overview of lecture’scontent • What is developmental psychology? • Nature and scope of developmental psychology • Goals of developmental psychology • Key issues in developmental psychology • Research methods used in this field of psychology • Ethical issues in research in developmental psychology
- 3. What is DevelopmentalPsychology? • Developmental psychology is the branch of psychology that tries to understand how a child grows and develops, and how the role of the family and schooling can impact on this. It looks at how our behaviour, our thinking patterns, our emotions and our personalities begin and change from birth to adulthood. • It is scientific study of changes that occur in human beings over the course of their life span. The pattern of change that begins at conception and continues through the life cycle.
- 4. Meaning of growthand development Growth • The term growth is used in a purely physical sense. it refers to increase in size, length ,height and weight. • Change in quantitative aspect (can be measured, observable) • Doesn’t continue throughout life. It stops once maturity is attained. Development • development implies overall changes in shape, form or structure resulting in the improved working/functioning. • Change in quality or character (improvement in functioning and behaviour, difficult to be measured directly) • It’s a continuous process and goes from womb to tomb. It doesn’t end with the attainment of maturity
- 5. Growth • Growth mayor may not bring development. A child may grow in terms of weight by becoming fat but this growth may not bring any functional improvement (qualitative change) or development. Development • development is also possible without growth as we see in cases of some children who do not gain in terms of height, weight or size but they do experience functional improvement or development in physical, social ,emotional or intellectual aspects .
- 6.
- 7. Nature and Scopeof Developmental Psychology
- 8. Developmental psychology is multidisciplinary •Developmental psychology ties together social, emotional and cognitive development through the study of the growing child. It is a wide-reaching branch of psychology and for that reason is, in our point of view, one of the most rewarding to study. • Biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes are inextricably intertwined (Diamond,2007).
- 9. • Biological, Cognitive& Socioemotional Processes We defined development as the pattern of change that begins at conception and continues through the life span. The pattern is complex because it is the product of biological, cognitive, and socioemotional processes. • Biological processes produce changes in an individual’s physical nature. Genes inherited from parents, the development of the brain, height and weight gains, changes in motor skills, the hormonal changes of puberty, and cardiovascular decline are all examples of biological processes that affect development. • Cognitive processes These refer to changes in the individual’s thought, intelligence, and language. Watching a colourful mobile, swinging above the crib, putting together a two- word sentence, memorizing a poem, imagining what it would be like to be a movie star, and solving a crossword puzzle all involve cognitive processes. • Socioemotional processes They involve changes in the individual’s relationships with other people, changes in emotions, and changes in personality. A child’s response to a parent’s touch, a toddler’s aggressive attack on a playmate, a school-age child’s development of assertiveness, an adolescent’s joy at a party, and the affection of an elderly woman all reflect the role of socioemotional processes in development.
- 10. Example • Considera baby smiling in response to a parent’s touch. This response depends on biological processes (the physical nature of touch and responsiveness to it), cognitive processes (the ability to understand intentional acts), and socioemotional processes (the act of smiling often reflects a positive emotional feeling, and smiling helps to connect us in positive ways with other human beings).
- 11. Scope of DevelopmentalPsychology • Developmental psychologists are interested in all aspects of our behavioural and psychological development. • They are interested in the social development of a child: from trying to understand the complexity of the relationship between a new-born infant and parent to the role of play in developing long-lasting friendships. • They are interested in the cognitive development of the child: the development of language; understanding numbers; and developing an appreciation for art and poetry. • They are interested too in emotional development and the way we make decisions and the role of parents and friends in developing our sense of morality and teenage decision making: careers, friendships, sexuality and risk taking.
- 12. Goals of DevelopmentalPsychology Description Explanation Prediction Human behaviour (growth and development)
- 13. Key issues inDevelopmental Psychology
- 15. Nature and nurture •The nature-nurture-issue revolves around the idea that both nature and nurturing may play a role in the growth and development of an individual. • Some argue the tabula rasa theory, that every person's mind is a blank slate at birth, while others believe that some traits are inborn. • Some researchers place a great deal of emphasis on the nurturing a child receives during his or her formative years, believing this nurturing results in the formation of traits and characteristics in an individual.
- 16. Stability and change •Stability implies personality traits present during infancy endure throughout the lifespan. In contrast, change theorists argue that personalities are modified by interactions with family, experiences at school, and acculturation. • This capacity for change is called plasticity. For example, Rutter (1981) discovered than somber babies living in understaffed orphanages often become cheerful and affectionate when placed in socially stimulating adoptive homes.
- 17. Example of Stabilityand change • Simply put, we can ask whether development is best characterized by stability (for example, does a behaviour or trait such as shyness stay stable in its expression over time?) or change (could a person's degree of shyness fluctuate across the life span?).
- 18. Continuity-discontinuity • Continuous development:change that occurs at a steady pace, perhaps showing a constant, consistent improvement or growth. • Discontinuous development: change that occurs in what appear to be great bursts of achievement following a period of steady consolidation of perhaps knowledge or skill. • There are two contrasting positions on developmental change. According to those who hold to the first position, development is best viewed as a continuous process. That is, development is conceived of as a process of the gradual accumulation of a behaviour, skill, or knowledge. On this model, development proceeds in a smooth and orderly fashion, with each change building on previous abilities.
- 19. • In contrast,those who hold to the second view would suggest that developmental change is best characterized as discontinuous in nature. • These theorists suggest that behaviours or skills often change qualitatively across time, and that new organizations of behaviours, skills, or knowledge emerge in a rather abrupt or discrete fashion. • The notion of a stage of development is central to discontinuous views of development.
- 20. • The stagetheorists tend to hold the view that development is a discontinuous process of change. Piaget and other theorists saw children of different ages as being qualitatively different: that is, that there is a significant, remarkable difference in how the older children think and appear to make sense of the world. • Piaget noted that younger children were not able to complete certain tasks that an older child could, and would, with ease. Piaget demonstrated this with the conservation of liquid task
- 22. Research designs usedin Developmental Psychology • Cross sectional research design • Longitudinal study • Experimental studies • Qualitative and quantitative methods
- 23. • The researchmethods used in developmental psychology research have evolved to take into account the particular difficulties of investigating behaviour and other phenomena in infants and young children. A questionnaire might be a suitable tool to use with the adult population to measure, for example, voting behaviour, choice of washing powder or even emotional states. However, when dealing with young children, developmental psychologists need to consider other factors, such as reading ability, comprehension and linguistic capability. A 4-year-old child, for instance, may not be able to read the questions, or write an answer, but if asked the questions by the researcher, it is possible that the child will be able to reply verbally.
- 24. • Developmental psychologistsemploy a number of research methods to aid them in answering their research questions, but the most commonly used are observations, case studies, questionnaires and experimental methods. • All of these methods are used by psychologists and other behavioural scientists but, for developmental psychologists in particular, the methods are often refined for use with very young participants. Whichever method is used, it tends to fall into one of two categories: either it is a longitudinal or cross-sectional study design or it involves quantitative or qualitative research.
- 25. Cross-sectional research design •For Example, What is the average score in a maths test given to 7-year-old children? Does maths score at age 7 years predict ability in maths at age 16 years? To answer the first research question, you will need to design a research project that measures every 7-yearold child’s ability in mathematics. One way of doing this would be to go into all the schools in the region, hand out the same maths test to all the 7-year-old children there and collect in their scores. When you have retrieved all the scores, you can then work out what the average score in the maths test is for this age group and confidently report your findings. The research design you have used here is a cross- sectional research design.
- 26. • The cross-sectionalresearch design allows researchers to collect data that describe the current situation – in our example, mathematical ability. Data collected in this way can reveal the lowest and highest score, the most common score (the modal score), the mid-point score (the median score) and the average score (the mean score). • In this example, the research design will allow you to calculate the norm or average maths ability in 7-year-olds and to show what the range of ability in 7-year-olds might be. This information could then be used by educators to identify children who are particularly able in maths, who might be encouraged to study more difficult problems, and children who are struggling with maths and who might need more help.
- 27. Limitations of crosssectional research design • The cross-sectional research design is, therefore, a useful way of conducting research, but it does have its weaknesses. This research method only allows us to calculate mathematical ability in children aged 7 years at one point in time. It does not allow us to calculate whether maths scores in children aged 7 years have changed over time and it does not tell us whether maths ability at age 7 years predicts maths ability (or any other type of ability) at a later age. The research design has only allowed us to see a ‘snapshot’ of mathematical ability. Like a photograph, the research can only provide us with information on one form of ability in one age group of children at one point in time. Thus, the researcher is limited in what she can infer from her findings.
- 28. Longitudinal Research Design •The longitudinal research method, however, allows the researcher to measure change over time and to find evidence of strong associations or predictors of this change. • The second research question (does maths score at age 7 years predict ability in maths at age 16 years?) requires a longitudinal research design. To answer this question, you need to start in the same way as before and hand out a standard maths test to all the 7- year-old children in a region and collect in all their scores. • At this point, however, the method of data collection changes. You must then return to the same children when they are 16 years old and collect their scores in another standard maths test.
- 29. • The longitudinalresearch design is an extremely useful tool for measuring change over time. • Longitudinal research relies on testing the same participants on at least two time points using the same test of measurement. It can be carried out over a couple of days or, as in this example, over a number of years.
- 30. Quantitative methods • Quantitativemethods can be described as methods that use numbers to describe and define concepts (Neuman, 2007). A typical quantitative method would use a survey or questionnaire to collect numerically coded data.
- 31. Commonly used quantitativemethods • Questionnaires and surveys A questionnaire or survey is a quick way of collecting a lot of information. It comprises simply a list of questions. Questionnaires usually require answers to be collected in a structured format. Thus you can collect yes/no answers, answers on a scale of 1 to 5, answers that fall into categories and answers on a continuous scale.
- 32. • Inventories indevelopmental psychology An example of an inventory used in developmental psychology is the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI). The MacArthur–Bates CDI forms are parent-based forms for assessing a child’s language and communication abilities. There are versions for infants aged 8–16 months, toddlers aged 16–30 months and children aged 30–37 months. The CDI form for infants measures their ability to understand words and gestures, whilst the CDI forms for toddlers and children measure their ability to say as well as understand words and short sentences.
- 33. Advantages of quantitativemethod • Quantitative methods have the advantage of being quick and easy to carry out. This also means that quantitative methods can often be a fairly inexpensive way of collecting large quantities of data. Another advantage of quantitative methods is that the data collected can often be analysed mathematically and statistically to provide information on norms and variation within the studied population.
- 34. Limitations of quantitativemethods • Quantitative methods provide numerical data on behaviour but rarely provide a satisfying answer to why the behaviour occurs. The methods are good for listing opinions, beliefs and knowledge but are unlikely to help you truly understand why a person thinks the way they do or how events in their past have affected the person they are now. Thus, quantitative methods are useful for providing an overview of behaviour but are unable to reveal the personal, in-depth experience of your participants
- 35. Experimental methods • Experimentalmethods in psychology refer to a manipulation of behaviour, usually in a laboratory setting but also recently in more naturalistic settings. • Examples of experimental methods are measuring recall of a list of words under conditions of silence or noise, measuring mathematical performance under conditions of high or low stress, and measuring young babies’ responses to their mother’s and other faces. • All of these experiments involve the manipulation of a variable (silence or noise, high or low stress, mother’s or other’s face) on a type of behaviour – memory, maths ability and face recognition.
- 36. Qualitative methods • Qualitativemethods can be described as methods that describe and define concepts, without the use of numbers. A typical qualitative method involves observing behaviour or, more commonly, talking to individuals or groups to discover their personal experiences. • Commonly used qualitative methods are : observational study, interviews, case studies
- 37. observations • Using anobservation study essentially involves watching a person or group of people in a particular situation.
- 38. Interviews • There aretwo main types of interview used in psychology, the structured and the open interview. The structured interview is useful for collecting opinions and preferences or data that require the respondent to answer every question from a pre-planned list. • the structured interview ensures that all respondents answer all the same questions, the open interview allows the interviewer and respondent the flexibility to explore the answers given and the issues raised within them. Neither the interviewer nor the participant is required necessarily to answer a set of questions and the flow of the interview depends on the answers given. • Lawrence Kohlberg (1963) used interviews in his famous paper on moral development
- 39. Case studies • Thecase study approach to research might be employed in a number of situations but invariably because the researcher notes something unique or interesting about a person or situation that warrants further investigation. • Case studies can provide a wealth of information if carried out accurately. The researcher may use this method to report the effectiveness of a particular counselling technique or teaching method that brought about significant behavioural change in the participant. • An example of case study work comes from some of the most influential work on child–mother attachment and the effects of periods of brief separation carried out in London in the 1960s and early 1970s by researchers James and Joyce Robertson (Robertson and Robertson, 1989).
- 40. Ethical issues inresearch in Developmental Psychology • Consent and assent • Power relationships, demand characteristics and coercion • Deception and debriefing participants • Protection from physical harm and psychological harm – distress, upset, guilt, loss of self-esteem • Participant confidentiality
- 41. Consent and assent •Taking an informed consent from the participants (the participants know what the study is about and what type of activity they will be involved in, and agree to take part, usually signing a form confirming this. With children under the age of 16 years, you have to get permission not only from the children but also from their parents to approach them for your study, and if you are conducting the study in a school, from the teachers and head teacher.) • (another is people with learning difficulties) who cannot truly give informed consent until they have attained adult status, so a written or verbal statement of agreement from them to taking part in the study is known as assent.
- 42. Power relationships, demandcharacteristics and coercion • One of the concerns with research is the power relationship that can exist between researcher and participant. • This is where the participant feels under pressure to act in a certain way either as a result of simply taking part in the research, or because they want to please the researcher. • The researcher therefore needs to be aware of the impact they may have on the behaviour of the participant and to work hard to provide a suitable atmosphere for the research that will encourage an honest reaction from the participant.
- 43. • Related tothis concept is the notion of coercion. Offering a financial reward or some other benefit for completing a study may convince a participant to continue with a study that is making them feel uncomfortable rather than legitimately asking to withdraw from the study. • Researchers commonly offer to pay travel and other expenses to their participants rather than a fee for completing the work, and it is vital that the researcher makes the participant (especially a child) aware that they can withdraw from the study at any time. It is good practice to provide breaks in the study so that the participant can be offered the opportunity to discontinue the research project. No participant should feel that they have been forced either to take part in the study or to continue with the study beyond a point where they feel uncomfortable
- 44. Deception and debriefingparticipants • Deception: the deliberate act of creating false knowledge in your participants for the purpose of influencing the outcomes of the research study. • Occasionally you may want to introduce a factor into your research project that you do not want your participants to know about in advance. For example, you may think that if the participant knows everything about your study, then the knowledge she has will change her behaviour. • So in order to counteract this, you may want to introduce an element of deception into your study.
- 45. • The rulesof research state that ‘deception is acceptable only if the researcher can show that it has a clear, specific methodological purpose, and . . . [they] should use it only to the minimum degree necessary’ (Neuman, 2007, p. 49). • Researchers using deception must obtain informed consent from their participants (describing the fundamental details of the research study), make use of deception safely and always debrief the participants afterwards to explain the use of the deception and the purposes for which it was used (Neuman, 2007).
- 46. Protection from physicalharm and psychological • The fundamental principle underlying all these considerations is the safety of researcher and his participants. • Care must be taken to prevent both physical and psychological harm. • Physical harm may come from the use of apparatus in the study, but also from furniture in the study area. • Researchers working with young children also need to be aware of sharp objects and keeping an eye on young children who may put things in their mouths. It is the researcher’s responsibility to ensure that the study is conducted in a safe environment and to stop any study when harm occurs or the researcher sees a potentially harmful situation arise (Neuman, 2007).
- 47. • Part ofethical working practice is to consider whether psychological harm could occur to the participants in any way as a result of carrying out your research study. For example , triggering trauma in the participants
- 48. Participant confidentiality • Whenconducting research in an ethical manner, it is necessary to consider the issue of participant confidentiality: that is, how to maintain the privacy of the participant and the confidentiality of data collected so that readers cannot identify any participants or their individual responses in the research report.