Spring 2015 Final Exam Study Guide 60 multiple choice 5 multiple choice extra credit Chapter 1 Understanding life span human development Development definition goals Defining development systematic orderly patterned and relatively enduring changes and continuities in the individual that occur between conception and death or from womb to tomb Physical the growth of the body and its organs the functioning of physiological systems including the brain physical signs of aging changes in motor abilities and so on Psychosocial changes and carryover in personal and interpersonal aspects traits interpersonal skills and relationships and roles played in the family and in the larger society Cognitive problem solving and other mental processes changes and continuities in perception language learning memory Goals of Developmental Science Description developmentalists characterize the functioning of humans of different ages and trace how it changes with age Describes both normal development and individual differences or variations in development Explanation see if there is a relationship between a possible influence on development and an aspect of development this must be established before the goal of explanation is achieved Optimization How can humans be helped to develop in positive directions How can their capacities be enhanced how can developmental difficulties be prevented and how can any developmental problems that emerge be overcome The scientific method It is both a method and an attitude a belief that investigators should allow their systematic observations or data to determine the merits of their thinking Involves a process of generating ideas and testing them by making observations 1 Preliminary observations provide ideas for a theory set of concepts and propositions intended to describe and explain certain phenomena Theories generate specific predictions or hypotheses regarding a particular set of observations Hypotheses are tested through observation of behavior and new observations indicate which theories are worth keeping and which are not A good theory should be internally consistent its different parts and propositions should hang together and should not generate contradictory hypotheses falsifiable It can be proved wrong that is it can generate specific hypotheses that can be tested and either supported or not supported by the data collected supported by data a good theory should help us better describe predict and explain human development that is its hypotheses should be confirmed by research results Data Collection Verbal Reports Interviews written questionnaires or surveys ability and achievement tests and personality scales all involve asking people questions either about themselves self report measures or about someone else Ask same amount of questions in same order so everyone is directly compared Behavioral observations naturalistic vs structured Naturalistic observation involves observing people in their everyday surroundings Used to study child development more often than adult development Only data collection technique that can reveal what children or adults do in everyday life Limitations Some behaviors occur too infrequently and unexpectedly to be studied through naturalistic observation 2 It is difficult to pinpoint the causes of the behavior observed because in a natural setting many events are usually happening at the same time any of which may affect behavior The presence of an observer can sometimes make people behave differently than they otherwise would Structured observation researches create special stimuli tasks or situations designed to elicit the behavior of interest By exposing all research participants to the same stimuli this approach increases the investigator s ability to compare the effects of these stimuli on different individuals Developmental methods Experimental an investigator manipulates or alters some aspect of the environment to see how this affects the behavior of the sample of individuals studied Independent variable the variable manipulated so that its causal effects can be assessed Dependent variable the variable being measure in an experiment and assumed to be under the control of or dependent on the independent variable Random assignment a technique in which research participants are placed in experimental conditions in an unbiased or random way so that the resulting groups are not systematically different Experimental control all factors other than the independent variable are controlled or held constant so that they cannot contribute to differences among the treatment groups Ability to establish unambiguously that one thing causes another that manipulating the independent variable causes a change in the dependent variable Can contribute to our ability to explain human development and sometimes to Strengths optimize it Weaknesses Because experiments are often conducted in laboratory settings or under unusual conditions the results may not always hold true in the real world Experiments often show what can cause development but not necessarily what most strongly shapes development in natural settings It often cannot be used for ethical reasons Ethical principles obviously demand that developmentalists use methods other than true experimental ones to study questions about the effect of widowhood and a host of other significant questions about development 3 Correlational involves determining whether two or more variables are related in a systematic way Correlation coefficient a measure ranging from 1 00 to 1 00 of the extent to which two variables or attributes are systematically related to each other in either a positive or negative way Positive Negative Zero A correlation near 0 00 would be obtained if there was no relationship between the two variables Strengths most important questions about human development can be addressed only through the correlational method because it would be unethical to manipulate people s experiences in experiments Complex correlational studies and statistical analyses allow researchers to learn about how multiple factors operating in the real world may combine to influence development Weaknesses It cannot unambiguously establish a casual relationship between one variable and another the way an experiment can Developmental Design Longitudinal Design one cohort of individuals is assessed repeatedly over a time Because the longitudinal design traces changes in individuals as they age it can tell