Why do developmentalists consider themselves scientists

The disadvantage is that the research aims to make a direct association between a cause and an effect. This is not always so easy. In some cases, there may be confounding factors that contribute to the effect. To this end, a cross-sectional study can suggest the odds of an effect occurring both in terms of the absolute risk the odds of something happening over a period of time and the relative risk the odds of something happening in one group compared to another.

Longitudinal research involves studying the same group of individuals over an extended period of time. Data is collected at the outset of the study and gathered repeatedly through the course of study. In some cases, longitudinal studies can last for several decades or be open-ended. One such example is the Terman Study of the Gifted , which began in the s and followed children for over 80 years.

The benefit of this longitudinal research is that it allows researchers to look at changes over time. By contrast, one of the obvious disadvantages is cost. Because of the expense of a long-term study, they tend to be confined to either a smaller group of subjects or a narrower field of observation.

While revealing, longitudinal studies are difficult to apply to a larger population. Another problem is that the participants can often drop out mid-study, shrinking the sample size and relative conclusions. Moreover, if certain outside forces change during the course of the study including economics, politics, and science , they can influence the outcomes in a way that significantly skews the results. We saw this with the Terman study wherein the correlation between IQ and achievement was blunted by such confounding forces as the Great Depression and World War II which limited educational attainment and gender politics of the s and s which limited a woman's professional prospects.

Correlational research aims to determine if one variable has a measurable association with another. In this type of non-experimental study, researchers look at relationships between the two variables but do not introduce the variables themselves.

Instead, they gather and evaluate the available data and offer a statistical conclusion. For example, the researchers may look at whether academic success in elementary school leads to better-paying jobs in the future. While the researchers can collect and evaluate the data, they do not manipulate any of the variables in question. A correlational study is useful if you are unable to manipulate a variable because it is either impossible, impractical, or unethical. For instance, why do biological children sometimes act like their parents—is it because of genetics or because of early childhood environment and what the child has learned from the parents?

What about children who are adopted—are they more like their biological families or more like their adoptive families? And how can siblings from the same family be so different? We are all born with specific genetic traits inherited from our parents, such as eye color, height, and certain personality traits. Beyond our basic genotype, however, there is a deep interaction between our genes and our environment: Our unique experiences in our environment influence whether and how particular traits are expressed, and at the same time, our genes influence how we interact with our environment Diamond, ; Lobo, This module will show that there is a reciprocal interaction between nature and nurture as they both shape who we become, but the debate continues as to the relative contributions of each.

The achievement gap refers to the persistent difference in grades, test scores, and graduation rates that exist among students of different ethnicities, races, and—in certain subjects—sexes Winerman, Research suggests that these achievement gaps are strongly influenced by differences in socioeconomic factors that exist among the families of these children.

While the researchers acknowledge that programs aimed at reducing such socioeconomic discrepancies would likely aid in equalizing the aptitude and performance of children from different backgrounds, they recognize that such large-scale interventions would be difficult to achieve.

Low-income children perform significantly more poorly than their middle- and high-income peers on a number of educational variables: They have significantly lower standardized test scores, graduation rates, and college entrance rates, and they have much higher school dropout rates. There have been attempts to correct the achievement gap through state and federal legislation, but what if the problems start before the children even enter school? Psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley spent their careers looking at early language ability and progression of children in various income levels.

In one longitudinal study, they found that although all the parents in the study engaged and interacted with their children, middle- and high-income parents interacted with their children differently than low-income parents. After analyzing 1, hours of parent-child interactions, the researchers found that middle- and high-income parents talk to their children significantly more, starting when the children are infants. And the gaps only become more pronounced. There are solutions to this problem.

At the University of Chicago, experts are working with low-income families, visiting them at their homes, and encouraging them to speak more to their children on a daily and hourly basis.

Other experts are designing preschools in which students from diverse economic backgrounds are placed in the same classroom.

What other methods or interventions could be used to decrease the achievement gap? What types of activities could be implemented to help the children of your community or a neighboring community? Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Module 9: Lifespan Development. Search for:. What Is Lifespan Development? As the infant plays, the researcher records whether the infant finds the surprise using the same procedure that was demonstrated.

Use of the elicited imitation procedure has taught developmental scientists a lot about how recall memory develops. Behavioral studies have taught us important information about what infants and children know about the world.

Research on behavior alone, however, cannot tell scientists how brain development or biological changes impact or are impacted by behavior. For this reason, researchers may also record psychophysiological data, such as measures of heart rate, hormone levels, or brain activity.

These measures may be recorded by themselves or in combination with behavioral data to better understand the bidirectional relations between biology and behavior. One manner of understanding associations between brain development and behavioral advances is through the recording of event-related potentials , or ERPs. ERPs are recorded by fitting a research participant with a stretchy cap that contains many small sensors or electrodes.

The recorded responses are then amplified thousands of times using specialized equipment so that they look like squiggly lines with peaks and valleys. Some of these brain responses have been linked to psychological phenomena. The peak is named in this way because it is negative hence the N and because it occurs about ms to ms after a stimulus is presented hence the This peak is particularly sensitive to the presentation of faces, as it is commonly more negative when participants are presented with photographs of faces rather than with photographs of objects.

In this way, researchers are able to identify brain activity associated with real world thinking and behavior. The use of ERPs has provided important insight as to how infants and children understand the world around them. The children wore electrode caps and had their brain activity recorded as they watched still photographs of faces of their mother or of a stranger and objects including those that were familiar or unfamiliar to them. The researchers examined differences in face and object processing by group by observing a component of the brainwave they called the prN because it was believed to be a precursor to the adult N Their results showed that the height of the prN peak commonly called the amplitude did not differ when faces or objects were presented to typically developing children.

When considering children with autism, however, the peaks were higher when objects were presented relative to when faces were shown. Differences were also found in how long it took the brain to reach the negative peak commonly called the latency of the response. Whereas the peak was reached more quickly when typically developing children were presented with faces relative to objects, the opposite was true for children with autism.

These findings suggest that children with autism are in some way processing faces differently than typically developing children and, as reported in the manuscript, children with more general developmental delays. Developmental science has come a long way in assessing various aspects of infant and child development through behavior and psychophysiology — and new advances are happening every day.

In many ways, however, the very youngest of research participants are still quite limited in the information they can provide about their own development. As such, researchers often ask the people who know infants and children best — commonly, their parents or guardians — to complete surveys or questionnaires about various aspects of their lives.

These parent-report data can be analyzed by themselves or in combination with any collected behavioral or psychophysiological data. Parents complete the preschooler version of this questionnaire by answering questions about child strengths, behavior problems, and disabilities, among other things.

Almost 3, pregnant women were recruited into the study during their pregnancy and were interviewed about their stressful life experiences. These findings suggest that stressful events experienced during prenatal development may be associated with problematic child behavioral functioning years later — although additional research is needed.

Whereas infants and very young children are unable to talk about their own thoughts and behaviors, older children and adults are commonly asked to use language to discuss their thoughts and knowledge about the world. In fact, these verbal report paradigms are among the most widely used in psychological research. For instance, a researcher might present a child with a vignette or short story describing a moral dilemma, and the child would be asked to give their own thoughts and beliefs Walrath, For example, children might react to the following:.

The medicine is extremely expensive and Mr. Kohut cannot afford it. The druggist will not lower the price. What should Mr. Kohut do, and why? Children can provide written or verbal answers to these types of scenarios.

They can also offer their perspectives on issues ranging from attitudes towards drug use to the experience of fear while falling asleep to their memories of getting lost in public places — the possibilities are endless. Verbal reports such as interviews and surveys allow children to describe their own experience of the world. Now you know about some tools used to conduct research with infants and young children. Remember, research methods are the tools that are used to collect information.

But it is easy to confuse research methods and research design. Research design is the strategy or blueprint for deciding how to collect and analyze information. Research design dictates which methods are used and how. Researchers typically focus on two distinct types of comparisons when conducting research with infants and children. The first kind of comparison examines change within individuals. As the name suggests, this type of analysis measures the ways in which a specific person changes or remains the same over time.

For example, a developmental scientist might be interested in studying the same group of infants at 12 months, 18 months, and 24 months to examine how vocabulary and grammar change over time. This kind of question would be best answered using a longitudinal research design. Another sort of comparison focuses on changes between groups. In this type of analysis, researchers study average changes in behavior between groups of different ages.

Returning to the language example, a scientist might study the vocabulary and grammar used by month-olds, month-olds, and month-olds to examine how language abilities change with age. This kind of question would be best answered using a cross-sectional research design.

Longitudinal research designs are used to examine behavior in the same infants and children over time. For example, when considering our example of hide-and-seek behaviors in preschoolers, a researcher might conduct a longitudinal study to examine whether 2-year-olds develop into better hiders over time. To this end, a researcher might observe a group of 2-year-old children playing hide-and-seek with plans to observe them again when they are 4 years old — and again when they are 6 years old.

This study is longitudinal in nature because the researcher plans to study the same children as they age. During the s three key figures have dominated the field with their extensive theories of human development, namely Jean Piaget , Lev Vygotsky and John Bowlby Indeed, much of the current research continues to be influenced by these three theorists. McLeod, S. Developmental psychology. Simply Psychology. Baltes, P. Darwin, C. A Biographical Sketch of an Infant.

Mind , 2, Preyer, W. Grieben, Leipzig,. The soul of the child: observations on the mental development of man in the first years of life. Rutter, M. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 22 4 , Toggle navigation.