Developmental Psychology

Attachment, deprivation and privation

Learning theories including O'Connor et al.’s (2013) study on social learning, parenting and
attachment.
Learning theory:

Psychologists have proposed two main theories that are believed to be important in forming
attachments.

Learning / behaviourist theory of attachment suggest that attachment is a set of learned behaviours

They learn to associate the feeder (usually the mother) with the comfort of being fed and through the
process of classical conditioning, they come to find contact with the mother comforting.
They also find that certain behaviours (e.g., crying, smiling) bring desirable responses from others (e.g.,
attention, comfort), and through the process of operant conditioning learn to repeat these behaviours
to get the things they want.

 Classical conditioning

o Learning to associate two stimuli together so that we begin to respond to one in the same
way as we already respond to the other.

o In forming attachments- food is the unconditioned stimulus

o Food- elicits a pleasurable response which is an unconditioned response.

o Neutral stimulus ( the mother) elicits no response

o However, if the UCS (food) is presented with the NS (the mother), this leads to a response of
pleasure.

o Eventually, the mother begins to elicit the pleasurable response from the child

o Mother becomes the conditioned stimulus and pleasure being the conditioned response

o Thus resulting in formation of attachment between mother and child

 Operant conditioning

o It is learning through consequences

o Positive reinforcement is behaviour which produces a pleasant consequence which leads to

a response from the caregiver. E.g. feeding

o As long as the caregiver provides the correct response, crying is reinforced

o Baby will then cry for comfort and the caregiver will respond with comforting behaviour.

o Negative reinforcement in attachment – behaviour which avoids an unpleasant consequence

to be repeated

o NR- caregiver receives NR which is crying, and by giving the child what it wants, it stops
crying

o Therefore, caregiver escapes something unpleasant through negatively reinforcing the

behaviour
 o Feeding/comforting a baby- avoids the crying so it’s likely to be repeated

o This leads to attachment being formed between caregiver and child.

Evaluation

 Strength

o Provides an adequate explanation of how attachments form

o Also, research has shown that we do learn through association and reinforcement.
Demonstrated in pavlov’s study.

 Weakness

o However, there’s a strong body of evidence suggesting that attachment isn’t based on food.

o Lorenz found that geese imprinted on their caregivers before being fed, and then
maintained these attachments.

o Even if we do accept that learning is important for human attachment, food may not be the
primary reinforcer.

o This is demonstrated in Harlow’s study

o Harlow found that monkeys attached to a soft surrogate not a wire one that dispensed milk

o Suggests that monkeys didn’t associate food with caregiver to form an attachment

o Going against the learning theory which states that attachments are purely based on
primary reinforcers like food.

o Instead, attention, care, responsiveness and comfort may be the main rewards rather than
food creating the attachment bond.

o However, Harlow’s study does lack generalisability

o Its extrapolating results from the use of non-human animals

o This isn’t representative of human attachments

o Learning theory is also based on studies with non-human animals

o May lack validity due to oversimplifying human behaviour.

o Although learning theory does explain how attachments can form between child and
caregiver

o It doesn’t look into the fact that attention & responsiveness from the caregiver are also key
factors that may be more important than reward.

O'Connor et al. (2013) parenting intervention promotes attachment based caregiving in young
children
Social learning theory- Children’s real life experiences and exposure (directly/indirectly) shapes their
behaviour

Blind study: A single- blind research method is a specific research procedure in which researchers and those
involved in the study, don't tell the participants if they’re being given a test treatment or a control
treatment.
Aim: To investigate whether a social learning theory based treatment promote change in qualities of parent-
child relationships

Main study:

• Clinical trial of 174 four-to-six years olds selected from a high-need urban area were randomly
assigned to a parenting program plus a reading intervention or a non-intervention control
condition.

• In-home observations of parent-child interactions were assessed in three tasks

• Free play

• Challenge task

• Tidy up

• Parenting behaviour was coded according to behaviour theory using standard count measures of
positive and negative parenting, and for attachment theory using measures of sensitive responding
and mutuality; children’s attachment styles were also assessed.

Results:

• Compared to the parents in the non-intervention groups, parents allocated to the intervention
showed increases in the positive behavioural counts and sensitive responding

• Change in behavioural count measures were linked with small changes in attachment-based
measures.

• There was no reliable change in childrens attachment types associated with the intervention.

• The findings demonstrate that standard social learning theory-based parenting interventions can
change aspects of parent-child relationship quality.

• The key finding was that the positive impact of a standard social learning theory intervention
extended to attachment theory measures: parents receiving the Incredible Years (plus reading
program) intervention demonstrated improvements in their sensitive responding to the child, as
rated by researchers blind to treatment status. There was a strong suggestion that the treatment
effects may be dependent on the interaction context.

• However they found no evidence that the intervention produced a positive change in the children’s
attachment representations derived from a narrative measure.

Evaluation:

Strength:

Participants were randomly allocated into groups, which reduces researcher bias and makes
results more reliable.

Strengths of the study include the use of randomized design, the intensive observational
parenting assessments, the diverse and community sample nature of the study, and the good
retention rate, increasing reliability.

Weakness:
 Although it included representative measures of social learning theory–based and attachment
theory–based models, it did not, and could not have included exhaustive measures of each
model.

therefore, It may be that the findings obtained here are limited to the particular
measures assessed.

Bowlby's maternal deprivation hypothesis and theory of attachment.

Bowlbys maternal deprivation hypothesis:

• According to Bowlby, the relationship between a caregiver & infant is important

• Theory is based on the evolutionary theory, where such closeness between child and infant is innate

• Its thought that its developed as a mechanism to ensure survival

• Bowlby states that attachment is an innate process and theres a critical period for its development

o Critical period usually lies from 6m to 2/3 years where the attachment systems active

o Its thought that if an attachments not formed within this time period, it will be very difficult
for a child to form an attachment later on

o Bowlbys theory also states that attachments develop between infants and caregiver as the
infant elicits care via social releasers

▪ Social releasers are an innate behaviour that helps initiate a response from a babys
mother or caregiver

o A child will use several social releasers to promote proximity, but then is directly towards
the primary caregiver

o Attachments that are formed are a mutual two way bond

o This phase continues till the age of 2

➢ Monotropy is one of the features of the theory

o Bowlby believed that the child will bias and will attach to one person in particular

o One attachment is qualitatively different from all others

o It’s the one that the internal working model is based on.

➢ Initial attachment serves as a template for future relationships

o Personality development into adulthood will therefore be defined by early attachment

experiences which are mentally stored by the child

o This mental relationship forms a bases for subsequent romantic relationships and
attachments with their offspring

o Breaking the maternal bond with the child at an early age of its life is likely to have some
serious effects on its intellectual, social and emotional development.

o Negative effects of maternal deprivation would be permanent and irreversible.

➢ Continuity hypotheses states that the template of what relationships are like is developed through
initial relationships with caregiver which then continues on into adulthood.
Evaluation

o Theory is supported by Bowlby’s 44 juvenile thieves study

▪ He found that 17 of the 44 thieves had experienced maternal separation

▪ 12 of these 17 were also classified as having affection-less psychopathy

characteristics

▪ Leads to a conclusion that experiencing separation early in the life results in

permanent emotional damage

▪ Supports Bowlbys MDH and suggests that mothers shouldn’t work as any separation
has permanent irreversible effects

▪ Bowlby’s evidence forced hospitals to change their criteria. Parents are now able to
visit their children at any point over 24 hours and are permitted to stay overnight
with them.

o Study carried out by Shaffer & emerson

▪ Found that infant can form multiple attachments

▪ Goes against bowlbys monotropy claim

▪ They usually become attached to one person first, but this is then followed by
attachments to many others

▪ They found that attachments weren’t necessarily formed with the person who spent
the most time with the infant

o Harlow (1959) tested whether feeding is the basis of attachment

▪ Two wire monkeys were placed & one was cloth covered with no food

▪ The other one wire monkey was placed with food

▪ What he found was that the monkeys spent majority of their time on the cloth
covered monkey

▪ Demonstrates that attachments aren’t just for feeding

▪ When monkeys had access to only the wire monkey with food, they resulted in
being socially maladjusted

▪ Suggests that attachments aren’t just for survival, but necessary for emotional
development

o Critical period, monotropy basis. Supported study carried out by Lorenz

▪ Preciocial species follow the first moving object they see on hatching and continue
to follow it thereafter ( imprinting )

▪ Its irreversible and only occurs during a short critical period

▪ Aids survival and Bowlby claimed something like imprinting occurs in infants where
they have an innate tendency to orient towards one individual

▪ But this must occur within a critical period

 o Although there are contradicting studies to Bowlby’s theory of attachment which suggest
other reasons for attachment, there are also supporting evidence which demonstrates
Bowlbys MDH in the real world – making it applicable.

-Privation is the failure to form a normal attachment. This normally takes place in extreme
circumstances such as neglect or abuse, such as being brought up in institutional care.
• Psychologists cannot simply prive a child for ethical reasons so all research is based on case
studies.
• The problem with case studies is that they are all unique, so it is difficult to draw conclusions.
• However, case studies do provide extensive detail on an individual and provide strong evidence
to support privation.

The 44 Juvenile Thieves study (1944)

o Aimed to provide evidence to support the maternal deprivation hypothesis in a sample of children
attending the Tavistock clinic guidance clinic

o Study was a retrospective study, which compared experiences of prolonged separation from
the mother

o There were a group of 44 thieves

o A matched group of 44 emotionally disturbed youngsters who hadn’t committed any crimes

o 44 thieves attending Tavistock clinic had been referred in a number of ways

o 50% of the thieves were described as chronic and serious offenders

o Control group was 44 maladjusted children who didn’t steal of commit crimes, but were
matched for age and intelligence

o Roughly 75% of participants were male and 25% female

o Which wasn’t representative of normal clinic intake, which is 60% male and 40%
female

o Procedure used – unstructured interviews.

o Used to provide detailed qualitative data about childhood

o Boys completed IQ tests, and they had psychiatric assessments with a social worker

o Information was then shared with Bowlby

o who then interviewed the boys and their mothers about childhood experiences of
separation and effects on childrens relationship

o tentative diagnosis were then made & psychotherapy was provided

o checklists were also used to diagnose affectionless psychopathy

o findings

o there were 32% affectionless psychopaths in the thieves

▪ where 86% of them experienced early separation

▪ 20% were depressed

 ▪ Only less than 5% classified as normal.

o Control group

▪ 0% were affectionless psychopaths

▪ 30% depressed

▪ 20% overly conscientious

o 17% of the thieves without affectionless psychopathy experienced maternal

deprivation

o 4% of the non-thieves experienced separation during critical period

o Conclusion

o Maternal deprivation can have severe and potential long term effects on emotional
development, including affectionless psychopathy

o Bowlby claimed that once attachment bond is broken, negative effects cant be
reversed or undone.

Evaluation points

o Implications of the study

▪ Research could be used to inform on issues concerning parenting, especially

potential negative effects of moms going out to work the randomized
design, the intensive observational parenting assessments, the diverse and
community sample nature of the study, and the good retention rate.

o Criticisms

▪ Its not generalizable

▪ Sample wasn’t representative as the London child guidance clinic usually

had 60% boys , 40% girls, so the two groups don’t represent the usual intake

▪ Gender composition then makes the study vulnerable to the accusation of

gender bias

▪ Although Bowlby’s research was in a form of highly detailed and provided

rich source of information, you cannot generalise the results from case
studies to the rest of the pop. as findings are unique to case being studied

▪ Lacks validity, as the data on maternal deprivation was collected

retrospectively

▪ Due to reconstructive memory, parents being asked to recall events from up

to 14 years previously, data may not be accurate

▪ Also, there might be social desirability bias

▪ Some parents may have not answered the questions honestly to show
themselves in a better light

▪ Some children had been separated for only a very short period, so it
shouldn’t have led to bond disruption

▪ Research was correlation an non experimental as for ethical reasons

 ▪ Separation or deprivation can’t be manipulated as in IV

▪ Research was correlational not experimental – for ethical reasons

separation cannot be manipulated as IV, so no cause and effect. thus, other
variables could have been possibly affecting the results.

▪ A double-blind trial should have been conducted for this experiment –

researcher bias (he made all assessments). Very Low Validity

▪ Data on maternal deprivation was collected retrospectively – Data cannot

be accurate, and some parents may have conformed to social desirability
effects.

▪ Some children had only been separated for very short periods – should not
have led to disruption of attachment.

▪ -Michael Rutter (1981) suggests this was due to privation rather than
deprivation as they didn’t have chance to form attachment.

5.1.2 Ainsworth’s work on attachment including types of attachment and care giver sensitivity.
The strange situation

o Ainsworth & Bell

o Aim

o To produce a method for assessing quality of attachment by placing an infant in a situation

of mild stress

▪ To encourage the infant to seek comfort

▪ And of novelty ( to encourage exploration behaviour)

▪ Both comfort seeking and exploration behaviours are indication of the quality of
attachment

o The method was devised as a way of measuring quality of an infant’s attachment

o It involves a no. of stages designed to gradually increase level of stress the infant
experiences

o Used 106 middle class American infants and their mothers

o Children all aged between 9-18months

o Parents gave consent to be observed

o Controlled structured observation

▪ Time sampling w/ a group of observers in lab settings

▪ Record what child is doing every 15 seconds

 ▪ Observers note down which behaviour is displayed, scoring brhaviour for intensity
on scale of 1-7

o Consisted of 8 episodes

▪ Mother and child are introduced to the room

▪ Mother and child are left along, and the child can investigate the toys

▪ A stranger enters the room and talks w/ the mother

▪ Stranger gradually approaches child w/ a toy

▪ Mother leaves the child alone with the stranger & the stranger interacts with the
child

▪ Mother returns, greets and picks up the child. The stranger leave inconspicuously

▪ The child is left on his own

▪ The stranger returns and tries to engage with the child

▪ Mother returns to greet and comfort the child.

o Seperation anxiety : stress is caused by being separated from a caregiver

o Stranger anxiety : stress is caused by the presence of a stranger

o Reunion behaviour: the way the caregiver is greeted on return

Secure attachment:

 Those who have harmonious & cooperative interactions w. their caregiver

 Not likely to cry is caregiver leaves the room

 Feeling anxious – seek close bodily contact with their caregiver and are easily soothed

 Seek and are comfortable with social interaction and intimacy

 Infant uses the caregiver as a secure base to explore, and thus function independently

 Willing to explore = high

 Stranger anxiety = high

 Separation anxiety = some easily soothed

 Behaviour on reunion = enthusiastic

 Caregiver’s behaviour = sensitive

 Percentage – 66%

Avoidant behaviour style:

 Children who tend to avoid social interaction & intimacy w/ others

 Such children show little response to separation & don’t seek proximity of caregiver on reunion

 Infant picked up – show little or no tendency to cling or resis being put down

 They’re happy to explore w or w/o caregiver

  Characterised by high levels of anxiousness & avoidant behaviour

 Willing to explore = low

 Stranger anxiety = low

 Separation anxiety = indifferent

 Behaviour on reunion = avoids contact

 Caretaker behaviour = may ignore infant

 Percentage = 22%

Resistant style of attachment:

 Seek & reject intimacy & social interaction

 Respond to separation from their caregiver with immediate & intense distress

 On reunion – display conflicting desire for and against contact

 May angrily resist being picked up whilst also trying other means to maintain proximity

 Willingness to explore = low

 Stranger anxiety = high

 Seperation anxierty = disressed

 Behaviour on reunion = seek & rejects

 Caregiver behaviour = ambivalent

 Percentage = 12%

Evaluation:

 Not conducted in a natural environment

o Lacks ecological validity

o The behaviour displayed is unnatural

o Therefore doesn’t measure behaviour in real life

o Child may behave differently in more familiar surroundings

 Criticized for ethical reasons/ethical grounds

o It causes distress to the child involved in the procedure

o Procedure was largely based on research by Harlow; where rhesus monkeys were exposed
to threatening stimuli

o Its more of a natural condition in this sense, for a chld to experience and one a child may be
accustomed to

o Although the procedure does induce stress in a child, the observers are trained to recognise
intense distress & stop the procedure is they feel the child will become more than
momentarily upset
  Structured observations

o Episodes are highly standardised & its conducted in a controlled environment

o The behaviour of the children can be recorded & reviewed by many observers to establish
inter-rater reliability

o However its not a useful procedure to measure attachment types in children accustomed to
separation, e.g. those who attend regular day care.

 Individual differences

o Marina fuertus conducted research on the sensitive responsiveness of mothers and the
attachment bond secured by attentive mother

o They studied 48 portuguese babies and observed them regularly, until their first birthday

o Found that not only sensitive, responsiveness of the mother that determined attachment
types, but rather the individual temperament or personality of the child which has an
overwhelming effect on attachment type

o Childs response is a result of their temperament rather than the attachment type they
developed through interactions with their mothers

o Children who attend daycare might display false attachment types

 Culture

o Some cultures encourage independence. So this procedure maybe not an appropriate tool
for measuring attachment types

o Western cultures encourage independence whereas other cultures, separation from parents
is uncommon

● Cross-cultural research into attachment types.

Grossman & Grossman

Conducted a longitudinal study of attachment in Germany

49 families recruited at hospital before child’s birth

Sample = typical German native families w/ traditional divisions of labour within the family

Mother tends to be the primary caregiver, father being the provider.

Found that 24/49 infants studied showed Type A- insecure/avoidant attachment behaviour during the
strange situation

Consistent w/ainsworth maternal sensitivity hypothesis, that parental sensitivity correlated with
child-parent attachment types found.

However- the attachment types found = disproportionate to those found in America.

Due to child rearing practices in Germany

German children=taught to be more independent from early age.

 Accustomed to being left with other adults, which may have interpreted as avoidant behaviour.

Takahashi

Studied attachment types of children in Japan

Found absense of type A (insecure-avoidant) attachment types.

30% less compared to the USA

Miyake interpreted this finding as a product of child-rearing practices and the temperament of Japanese
children

rarely separated from the mother and attachment is characterised by close and physical contact.

Also found to have fearful and irritable temperament, making them more distressed at separation

In SS, distress is interpreted as resistant-attachment behaviour. Japanese show disress in Ep 2, co-founded

by subsequent episodes of seperation & stranger activity around child.

Suggests that the strange situation isnt a valid tool to measure attachment for Japanese children.

Rather than an indication of maladaptive parenting, it represents an unusual response to the procedure
itself.

Further supported by modern Japanese families who often work and leave their children regularly. In
these modren families, attachment distribution behaviour is similar to the USA.

Classic study : Izendoorn and Kroonenberg (1988)

➢ Aim of the study

o was to carry out cross cultural analysis looking at differences between cultures of the
attachment types in different countries

o They also wanted to gather data from some countries to focus on issues with individuals
study samples which may have biased the results

➢ Procedure

o Meta-analysis was used using suitable studies from which the strange situation could be
analysed in terms of attachment types

o Criteria was used & children with SEN weren’t included

o Studies with overlapping samples & any children over 24 months weren’t included either

o 32 samples from 8 countries was used, involving 1900 strange situations

o Attachment types were classified as A, B and C

o A being anxious avoidant, B as secure attachment and C as anxious resistant

➢ Results

o found were that secure attachment is the more prevalent type of attachment across all 8
countries

o But there are significant cultural differences

▪ In individualistic cultures such as Germany, there was a higher proportion of anxious

avoidant
 ▪ Possibly because parents place high value on independent

▪ So children in SS show less distress in the absence of their mother

▪ In collectivist cultures

▪ There’s high level of anxious resistant, as a high value is placed on dependency

within culture

▪ Children are rarely separated from their mother so they become distressed when
they’re separated from their mother

o There’s also a greater variation found in attachment types within counties and there was a
difference in attachment types in studies from the same culture

o E.g. one of the German samples was diff. in attachment types from another study conducted
in Germany as it was from the US

o Universal consistently of attachment might be explained by the effects of mass media, which
spreads ideas about parenting

o Results suggest that significant variations in attachment can’t be accounted for by the
differences or applications of the coding system used, rather child rearing procedure which
varies from country to country and from culture to culture

Evaluation

Secure attachment – most common attachment type, illustrating that there does seem to be a key factor to
raising a child in all cultures and countries

 Strength – demonstrates that the SSP might not be a universal measure of attachment

▪ Study used meta- analysis of studies that were already conducted, therefore less
time consuming and allows a large sample to be analysed, looking at correlation and
links that could be made between the study

➢ Weakness

▪ However, data must be quantitative so that its comparable across various programs
to allow a genuine statistical analysis and the research used must be sufficient
quality

▪ One poor conducted study can put the results at risk

▪ Majority of the data gathered came from studies in individualistic cultures

▪ Only one study data was used to represent china compared to 18 from America

▪ Used a small or biased number of middle class families

▪ Cant represent the whole culture completely

▪ Japan was stress related as to the fact that children rarely separate from the mother

▪ This would be assessed as insecure, which is imposed etic as its imposing western
values onto other cultures

Contemporary study: Cassiba et al. Attachment the Italian way

Aim:

- To investigate whether the majority of Italian children and adults are classified as having secure
attachments

- Whether Italian adults would have a lower percentage of unresolved attachments compared to other
countries.

- whether children in clinical samples varied from non-clinical

Method:

- It was a meta-analysis, the data came from PsycINFO which is a psychology database of academic journals.

- They used the key words 'Italian' 'attachment' and 'Strange Situation Procedure’.

- It resulted in 627 participants within 17 studies from the Strange Situation Procedure and 2258
participants from 50 studies using the Adult Attachment Interview

- Strange Situation data was compared to American samples used in I and K's study

- Adult Attachment Interview data was compared to American data in Kranenburg and I's study

Results:

- Non-clinical Italian children were classified as 33% Type A, 53% Type B and 14% Type C

- Italian children showed more avoidant attachments

- Clinical and at-risk children showed attachment of 40% Type A, 32% Type B and 28% Type C.

- Italian children with clinical/at-risk mothers seemed to be more avoidant

Conclusion:

- Most non-clinical children were securely attached and therefore similar to the American sample

- Both non-clinical and clinical showed more avoidant attachment types

Evaluation

Italian parents don't feel response for their child’s development and that it’s natural.

First meta-analysis of attachment in italy, on of a kind. Use of meta analysis is time saving and cost effective.

Use of unpublished studies, which ensures/avoids file drawer effect.

Only looked at gold standard SSP studies & AAI data of 0.75 inter-rater reliability.

Use of standardized procedure, increasing reliability.

Cognitive and language development

5.1.3 Theories of cognitive development

Piaget's stages of cognitive and language development.
 Believed that cognitive development- result of two influences: maturation and environment

 Maturation – the effects of aging.

 Children get older-certain mental operations become possible & at the same time, through
interactions with the environment, their understanding of the world becomes more complex

 Schemas – self constructed mental structures that help organize & make sense of info by describing
a pattern of thoughts or behavior that organizes categories of info and relationships.

 Assimilation – when an existing schema is used on a new object. - involves the incorporation of new
info. Into an existing schema.

 Accomodation – when a child adapts existing schema in order to understand new information that
doesn’t appear to fit.

 Piaget: cognitive development is driven by the need for equilibrium in cognitive structures.

 When child's aware of shortcomings in existing thinking, they experience an imbalance between
what is understood and what is encountered.

 Try to reduce these imbalances – developing new schemas or adapting old ones till equilibrium is
restored. = equilibrium

 Operations – used to describe cognitive mental roles

 Schemas and operation – variant process, changing as a child matures.

 Assimilation and accommodation – invariant process. Remain the same throughout a person's
lifetime.

 First stage- sensorimotor stage (birth – age 2)

o Main achievement – object permanence. Knowing an object still exists.

o Young infants: lose interest in an object when its hidden – assume it has ceased to exist

o 8 m – realize that objects out of sight: still exist.

o Requires ability to form mental representation of object. Learn to coordinate sensory input
w/ motor actions (their hand movements- through circular reactions where they repeat
same actions over and over to sense sensorimotor relationship

Bower and wishart (1972) (Contradicting) Weakness

o Placed a teddy bear in front of 4months old babies; the babies would raise their hands to
reach up for it.

o When the lights were turned out, they observed that the babies still raised their hands to
reach for the bear.

 Pre-operational stage: 2-7 years.

o Young children able to think about things symbolically.

o Ability to make one thing ( word or object) stand for something other than itself.

o Begin to represent world w/ words images and drawings.

o Not capable of reversibility of thought.

o Child's reliance on perceptual thoughts that log. Based reasoning

o Thinking – still egocentric. Difficulty taking viewpoint of others.

o Only see world from their position and aren't aware of other perspectives.
Piaget
• Illustrated pre-operational thinking using the three mountains task.
• Children were shown a set of pictures and asked to choose the one which showed the
doll’s perspective. Four year old children tended to choose their own perspective rather
than the perspective of the doll, demonstrating ego-centrism.

Hughes (1975) contradicting

• Used children between 3 and a half and five and conducted the toy policeman test. They
had to hide the doll where the 2 policeman couldn’t see it. 90% hid the doll from the view
of the police. Its suggested that this task was understood by the children and was
something they could relate to.

 Concrete operational stage 7-11 years

o Piaget considers concrete stage: major turning point in child's cognitive development

o Marks the beginning of logical or operational thought- child can internally work out things in
their head rather than trying things out in real life

o Able to recognise and conserve quantities.

o Conversation in stage – requires children recognizing that quantities don’t change even if
they look diff.
Piaget (Supporting)
• He demonstrated this by showing children various displays of quantity such as rows of
counters, cylinders of plasticine or beakers of water
• When the display was transformed for example water being poured in the taller beaker,
children did not think it looked the same
• Only children around the age of seven recognised, that the volume of water remained the
same even after the appearance had changed

 Formal operational stage – 11 years above.

o Lasts into adulthood. People develop the ability to think about abstract concepts and to
logically test hypothesis.

o Children can now solve abstract problems – using hypothetico-deductive reasoning

o Children also display idealistic thinking. No longer tied to how things are – able to imagine
how things might be if changes are made
Piaget and Inhelder (Supporting)
• Used the beaker problem to demonstrate how children apply logical thinking to problem-
solving
• Children were shown five liquid beakers and asked to work out how to turn the liquid
yellow by combining various liquids
• Young children tried random combinations whereas children at the stage of the formal
operational stage developed a logical strategy

Keating (Contradicting)
• Keating found that many 40-60% of college students fail at the formal operational tasks
and another researcher found that only 1/3 adults ever reach the formal operational stage
•
Evaluation:

Strength

o Huge impact on education and in psychological research

 o Piagets pre-operational stage: illustrated using three mountains task

o Children – shown set of pictures and asked to choose the one which showed dolls
perspective.

o 4-year-old – children tended to choose their perspective rather than perspective of the doll.
: Egocentrism ( use supporting evidence above)

Weakness:

 Piagets theory – focuses too much on logic and generally ignores social factors.

 Piaget: also underestimated children's abilities at younger age and may have overestimated ability
to use abstract logic in formal operational stage.

 Contradicting evidence (above)

Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD)

o Area between the child's current levels of development and the potential level of
development that can be achieved with the help of another. E.g. child will perform new
activities w/ help of MKO & then they'll be able to complete them independently.

o Concept of MKO – difference between what a child can achieve independently and what a
child can achieve with guidance and encouragement from skilled partner.

o Vygotsky sees zone of proximal development – area where most sensitive instruction or
guidance should be given allowing the child to develop skills they will then use on their own.
Developing higher mental functions

o Also views interaction w/peers as an effective way of developing skills and srategies.

o A child’s ZPD is the region where cognitive development takes place.

o The learner is aided by cultural influences (e.g. experts and language)

o At first, learning is between people (social) and later it becomes internaalised (individual) a
process called internalisation;

o Evidence for the ZPD – mcnaughton & leyland.

▪ Observed young children working w/their mothers on jigsaw puzzle of increasing

difficult and then a week later observed the children working on their own.

▪ Reached higher level of difficult with their mothers (potential ability) than when
working on their own ( current ability) – defining their ZPD.

▪ ZPD was related to the method of instruction used by the mothers.

Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development

Cognitive development occurs in a child through four ways when children internalise the tools of
thinking through social interactions with those who currently know more than they do.

Vygotsky called this person the more knowledgeable other; it refers to someone who has a better
understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, with respect to a particular task, process or
concept.
 Children learn by interacting with other people in a social context and in a specific culture.

Child as an apprentice is learning with others and sometimes the more knowledgeable other doesn’t
always have to be a teacher or adult,,in many cases as a child’s peers or an adult’s children may be the
individuals with more knowledge or experience.

The zone of proximal development is the area between a child’s current level of development and the
potential level of development that can be achieved with the help of another.

Vygotsky sees the zone of proximal development as the area where the most sensitive instruction or
guidance should be given, allowing the child to develop skills they will then use on their own, developing
higher mental functions.

The child will first perform new activities with the more knowledgeable other and then be able to do it
themselves.

Scaffolding is when the more knowledgeable other first identifies the parts of the task that the child
finds difficult in a social setting and then helps them with the parts of the task that they found difficult
providing a framework which supports them with their learning and the support is matched to the
child’s needs.

Strength:

Vygotsky claims that the effects of culture have been supported in cross – cultural research

Gredler pointed to the primitive counting system used in Papa New Guinea as an example of
how culture can limit cognitive development. Counting is done by starting on the thumb of one
hand and going up the arm and down to the to the other fingers, ending at 29. This system
makes it very difficult to add and subtract large numbers, and this is a limiting factor for
development in the culture of Papa New Guinea.

Vygotsky believed that language and thought are at first independent, but then become
interdependent.

This is supported by a study done by Carmichael et al who gave participants one of two labels for
certain drawings. The participants were shown a kidney shape and were told either that their
drawing was a kidney bean or a canoe. When participants were subsequently asked to draw the
shape, the shape differed according to which label the participants were given showing that
words can affect the way we remember things.

The zone of proximal development

supported by McNaughton and Leyland who observed young children working with their
mothers on jigsaw puzzles of increasing difficulty, and then a week later the children were
observed working on their own.

The children reached a higher level of difficulty with their mothers than when working on their
own defining the zone of proximal development.

When the children were doing puzzles that were too easy for them and below the child’s zone
of proximal development, the mothers were mainly concerned with keeping the child on the
task.

At the second level which was within the child’s zone of proximal development, the mother
focused on helping the child solve the puzzle for themselves and at the third level which was
beyond the child’s zone of proximal development the emphasis was placed on completing the
puzzle.
 In relation to Piaget, Vygotsky’s theory provides a bridge between social and cognitive domains and is a
more positive approach because the theory suggests ways in which others can also be actively involved.

Vygotsky’s theory has more educational applications and in teaching where teachers use peer teaching
and put children into a group with mixed abilities.

Weakness:

despite the number of studies that support the features of Vygotsky’s theory, there has been little
research done on his theory compared to the amount of research that was conducted for Piaget. This is
because Vygotsky’s theory is not that easy to conduct and experiment on, as the concepts are more
difficult to operationalise.

Piaget underplayed the importance of social influences, Vygotsky may have overplayed the importance
of social influences. If social influence alone is all that is needed for cognitive development in a child
then children would develop much faster than they actually do,

It down plays other factors such as biological factors which can also have an effect.

Stages of language development.

Language acquistion: process by which humans acquire the capability to perceive and comprehend
language, as well as to produce and use words to communicate.

Capacity to successfully use language requires one to acquire a range of tools including syntax (arrangement
of words and phrases to create well-formed sentences in a language, phonetics (mastering the sound of
human speech) and an extensive vocabulary.

Acquisition takes into account that developing language can often be an unconscious process and does not
have to involve explicit teaching.

The child normally dictates/controls the pace of development. Its not the case that we learn language only
via conditioning or modeling, if this were true we would only be able to create sentences we had already
heard someone else say.

Stage 1: Pre-linguistic sounds. (0-12 months)

Cooing - vowel-like sounds.

Babbling-experimenting with random speech sounds. Infants typically engage in vocal play.

e.g.changing pitch and loudness.

Stage 2: one-word stage (Holophrastic) (1 year old)

Emergence of first word

Sounds related to meanings/functions. e.g. naming things.

Single words used to convey a whole sentences meaning

Perception of phonemes (different sounds) is present, although child may not be able to pronounce all
the different sounds.

Stage 3: Two word stage ( by 2 years old)

Mini-sentences with simple semantic relations

Children who are asked to repeat sentences may leave out connectives.
 “i can see a cow” repeated as “see cow”

Stage 4: multi-word stage (telegraphic) (2-5 years old)

More elaborate syntax, but frequent grammatical mistakes. (overgeneralisation)

Towards the end of the stage, children are learning up to 30 words per day

Pronounciation is closer to an adult

Stage 5: fine tuning stage (5-10 years old)

Refining grammer and building vocabulary.

Theories of language: learning including skinner

Main principles of operant conditioning are positive and negative reinforcement.

Reinforcement is the process in which a behaviour’s strengthened and thus, more likely to happen again.

Positive reinforcement is making a behaviour stronger by following the behaviour with a pleasant stimulus.

Negative reinforcement is making behaviour stronger by taking away a negative stimulus.

Skinner:

Views babies as ‘empty vessels’ which language has to be ‘put into’.

According to skinner, babies have no innate capacity for language but must learn it completely via the
environment.

He agreed that language was technically a cognitive process but proposed that children learn language
through the behaviorists principles of operant conditioning.

Children learn words by associating sounds with objects,actions and events by imitating others.

Adults enable children to learn words and syntax by reinforcing correct speech.

1. Reinforcement: idea of reinforcement states that children receive ‘rewards’ for using language in a correct
and functional manner and that parents shape the child’s language behaviour.

• Parents reward infant vocalisations (such as babbling)by giving the infant attention

• This increases the frequency of vocalisation and motivates the infant to vary the babbling

• Sometimes by accident, the child produces more recognisable speech sounds, parents might
respond excitedly to this, thinking that the child is trying to say a known word.

• The response reinforces the child’s production of this type of speech sound

• Other sounds that are less like actual speech tend to be ignored.

• To maintain the attention and reinforcement children modify such sounds until the shaping process
results in recognizable words.

• This process continues, resulting in increasing complexity and grammatical correctness

• Use of language is positively reinforced.

• Reinforcement doesn't have to be physical but can also be social reinforcement in the form of
praise and encouragement.
 • Incorrect grammar and language is negatively reinforced and will not be used again.

2. Imitation of others: Environmental exposure to the language of others (e.g. parent and teachers) allows
children to learn it. This means that children can only develop language that they have previously heard
from others. - a finite (limited) grammar.

Evaluation

Strength

• Skinner’s ideas of language acquisition are widely used today and parents are now more aware of
how to control their
child’s behaviour in
terms of what they say
because of
reinforcement and this
is important when it
comes to parenting.
.
Weakness

Some parents pay

very little attention to the
vocalisation of the infants,
who sill develop language
despite this.

Conditioning is a
very lengthy process,
whereas a child’s language
development, particularly
during the second year of
life is very rapid.

Observational
studies of parent-child
conversations show that
parents rarely reinforce
correct grammar in a
child’s speech, but instead
tend to focus on the truthfulness or accuracy of statements. This makes it less likely that conditioning is
a convincing explanation of how children learn grammar.

There can be an infinite number of sentences in a language. All these sentences cannot be learned by
imitation alone.

Children make errors, such as over-regularizing verbs.

Errors like these can’t results from imitation, since adults generally use correct verb forms.

If children learn vicariously, meaning that they learn from adults, Skinner’s theory cannot explain why
children make mistakes often when learning language.

Children also over-regularize words, such as using verbs like ‘beated’ or ‘hitted,’ and these errors cannot
be take in from imitating adults since adults do not use incorrect verbs.
 Children cannot acquire grammar through imitation and they may copy words, but the interpret the
meanings and the relationships of the words by themselves

Theories of language: Chomsky’s language acquisition device.

Nativists theories focus on there being a biological basis for language and that children have the innate
abilities to learn language.

This supports a nature view of human development, which is that development is pre-wired into our
genes and not dependent on environmental influences.

Chomsky proposed the idea of innate learning, he pointed out that while all the languages in the world
may sound very diverse, they’re actually very similar; sharing some basic elements which he called
universal grammar, and that all children are born with the innate tendency to learn any human
language.

The universal grammar is an idea of innate, biological grammatical categories, such as a noun category
and a verb category that facilitate the entire language development in children and overall language
processing in adults.

The child’s task is just to learn the words of his/her.

For example, according to the universal grammar account, children instinctively know how to
combine a noun and a verb into a meaningful correct phrase. Chomsky terms this innate ability
the language acquisition device, or LAD for short.

He believes that children instinctively learn language without any formal instruction. He also believes
children have a natural need to use language, and that in the absence of form language children will
develop a system of communication to meet their needs.

He has observed that all children make the same type of language errors like over generalization;
regardless of the language they’re taught.

he believes that all children have a critical period during which they can acquire language, between the
ages of 2-9 years old.

language comes naturally and by parents simply speaking around the child, the child will pick up some
language, and he also said that if children make a grammatical error and they’re corrected they will still
continue to speak the same way as they did before.

Evaluation:

Strength:

biological factors do play a role in language development.

The stages of language development to occur at the same ages in most children, even though different
children experience very different environments.

Young children also generally acquire language skills more quickly and effortlessly.

children’s language development follows a similar pattern across cultures and all languages of the world
share similar characteristics of using nouns, verbs, pronouns, though not necessarily in a similar order.

Grammar and complex language usage seems also to be a uniquely human capability as no other species
on the planet seems to possess such proficiency as humans.
 Deaf children who have not been exposed to a language sometimes make up their own language too,
where these new languages resemble each other in a sentence structure, even when they’re created in
different cultures; thus stating that language does have a biological role.

Weakness

Chomsky’s own research does not specifically identify areas of the brain or a genetic basis that enables
humans innate ability for language but other psychologists have attempted to support his claims by
researching a possible location for these innate language categories.

This may be achieved via the study o language deficient patients. It has been known that
damage to the left hemisphere in the ‘ Brocas Area’ causes loss of speech, especially to grammar
elements. One patient studied with damage to this area couldn’t produce the grammatical word
‘Would’ within a sentence but could produce the word ‘wood’. This suggests that innate
grammatical categories are located in the left hemisphere.

Further evidence using P.E.T scans has indicated that a conclusion of this nature is much
too simplistic as different areas are implicated in speech production.

the role of other people in the development of language is also important which Chomsky has ignored in
his theory.

the theory is difficult to test scientifically as it’s unethical to isolate a person from the environment for
the purposes of research, therefore questioning Chomsky’s theory of innate learning.

Theories of language: interactionist including Vygotsky.

Vygotsky differentiates between three forms of language:

 social speech which is external communication used to talk to others (typical from the age of two);

 private speech: audible talking (typical from the age of three) which is directed to the self and
serves an intellectual function, rather than a communication function;

 and finally, private speech goes underground, diminishing in audibility as it takes on a self-regulating
function and is transformed into silent inner speech (typical from the age of seven). Its non-audible
with self-regulating/thinking function.

 thought and language are initially separate systems from the beginning of life, merging at around
three years of age.

 At this point speech and thought become interdependent: thought becomes verbal, speech
becomes representational. When this happens, children's monologues internalized to become inner
speech.

 By interacting with his environment, a child develops the ability to develop private, inner speech.

 The internalization of language is important as it drives cognitive development.

 Like Chomsky, Vygotsky also thought that infants are born with the basic materials/abilities for
intellectual development.

 Vygotsky’s called these elementary mental functions and they include attention, sensation,
perception and memory.

 He believed that children learn from others who are more knowledgeable and who support their
learning and allow them to develop higher mental functions.
  Vygotsky's influential theory of the "zone of proximal development" asserts that teachers should
consider a child's prospective learning power before trying to expand the childs grasp of language.

 According to Lev Vygotsky, language acquisition involves not only a child's exposure to words but
also an interdependent process of growth between thought and language.

 Vygotsky's theory of language is based on constructivist learning theory, which implies that children
acquire knowledge as a result of engaging in social experiences.

 Through social and language interactions, older and more experienced members of a community
teach younger and less experienced members the skills, values, and knowledge needed to be
productive members of that community.
•
 He considered private speech as the transition point between social and inner speech, the moment
in development where language and thought unite to constitute verbal thinking.

 According to Vygotsky’s theory, language is not just an innate ability, but it develops to suit a specific
environment.

 Language is bound by the context or by the culture and environment & isnt universal.

 Vygotsky’s model of collaborative learning (ZPD) is the idea that conversations with older people can
help children develop both cognitively and linguistically.

 The child observes the interaction between other people and then behaviour develops inside the
child.

 The child first observes the adults around him communicating amongst themselves, and then later
develops the ability himself to communicate.

 At first the adult talks at the child and eventually the child learns to respond.

 Scaffolding takes place when parens make efforts to tailor their articulation to young children to
maximize phonemic contrasts and respond to children’s immature pronunciation by repeating it bak
to them in an attempt to demonstrate the speech in the correct form.

Evaluation

Strength

• Vygotsky’s theory has lots of application in the world of education and has ben key in shaping teaching
practice.

• The ideas of peer teching and mixed ability groups is based on the idea of the MKO

• Problem based learning where teacher provide the information and then ask questions, rather than
simply providing the answers is another example of scaffolding.

Weakness

• Vygotsky’s work is complex and theoretical, which isnt helped by the fact that it had to be translated from
Russian

• He died at a young age, before he had the chance to fully develop his ideas.

• Vygotsky’s socio-cultural perspective doesnt provide as many specific hypotheses to test as did Piaget’s
theory, making it difficult to falsify as variables cannot be identified in order to create empirical research.
• His socio-cultural perspective doesn’t provide as many specific hypotheses to test as did Piaget’s theory,
thus making it difficult to falsify as variables cannot be identified in order to create empirical research

• Usefulness of Vygotsky’s theory has been critical to all other cogntivie development. Some children with
learning difficulties for example, are unable tos peak but still can perform quite well on many types of task.

• Also children who are profoundly deaf and often have speech difficulties, their intelligence is sometimes
undamaged.

Comparisions
Vygotskys constructivist language theory exists in opposition to Jean Piagets theory of
language acquisition.
According to Piaget, children construct knowledge about language through a complex process
of assimilation, stressing the inherent capability of a childs brain to adapt to stimulation.
By contrast, Vygotsky stresses the social nature of language learning, emphasizing the
environment within which a child is raised.
(Piaget basically claimed that development had to come before learning but Vygotsky’s theory
states that learning in a social context enables development.)
Vygotsky’s theory also differs to skinner’s, as Vygotsky’s view of learning is not law-like and
universal, but shaped by culture and context (specific environments and situations).
Vygotsky also accepted that humans have some innate cognitive capacities and are not born
as a blank slate as Skinner suggested.

5.1.4 Theories of Social and emotional development

Erikson's stages of psychosocial development ‘Eight ages of Man’ theory

Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development has eight distinct characteristics
He is described as a neo-Freudian as his theory is a newer version of Freud’s theory.
Each of his stages is characterized by a specific developmental ‘task’ or psychosocial ‘crisis’.
Crisis are resolved through interactions with others (hence social).
According to his theory:
- Successful completion of each stage- results in a healthy personality & the acquisition of basic virtues.
- Basic virtues are characteristic strengths which the ego can use to resolve subsequent crisis.
- Too many negative traits- is unhealthy, leading to a failure to successfully complete a stage.
- This can result in a reduced ability to complete further stages & therefore a more unhealthy
personality and sense of self.
- These stages, however can be resolved successfully at a later time.

1. Trust vs Mistrust ( age 0-12m)

• First psychosocial crisis occurs during the first year or so of life.
• The infant is uncertain about the world they live in.
- To resolve feelings of uncertainty, the infant looks towards their primary caregiver for stability and
consistency of care.
- If the care infant receives is consistent, predicable and reliable: they’ll develop a sense of trust, which
will carry with them to other relationships.
 - They’ll be able to feel secure even when threatened.

• Success in this stage-leads to the virtue of hope.

- By developing a sense of trust, infant can have hope that as new crisis arise, there’s a real possibility
that other people will be there as a source of support
- Failing to acquire virtue of hope - will lead to development of fear.
- e.g. caregiver is harsh or inconsistent- infant will develop a sense of mistrust and will not have
confidence in the world around them or in their abilities to influence events
- Infant will carry basic sense of mistrust with the to other relationships.
- May result in anxiety, insecurities and over feeling of mistrust in the world around them.

• Research by Bowlby and Ainsworth- outlines how the quality of the early experience of attachment can
affect relationships with others in later life.

2. Autonomy Vs. shame and Doubt (18 months - 3 years)

Child is developing physically and becomes more mobile.
• Children begin to assert their independence
• Child is discovering that he/she has many skills and abilities.
• Such skills - illustrate child’s growing sense of independence and autonomy

• Erikson states its critical that parents allow children to explore the limits of their abilities within an
encouraging environment which is tolerant of failure.
• Parents need to encourage the child to become more independent whilst at the same time protecting the
child so constant failure is avoided.
• Delicate balance is required from the parent.
• They must try not to do everything for the child.
• If the child fails at a particular task, they must not criticize the child for failures and accidents.
• Aim has to be ‘self control without a loss of self-esteem’

• Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of will.

• If children in this stage are encouraged & supported in their increase independence, they
become more confident and secure in their own ability to survive in the world.
• If children are criticized- overly controlled, or not given the opportunity to assert
themselves, they begin to feel inadequate in their ability to survive, and may then become
overly dependent upon others, lack self-esteem, and feel a sense of shame or doubt in their
own abilities.

3. Initiative vs. guilt (3-5 years)

• primary feature involves child regularly interacting with other children at school.
• Central to this stage: play.
• It provides children with opportunity to explore interpersonal skills through initiating
activities.
• children develop a sense of initiative and feel secure in their ability to lead others and make
decisions.
 • If this tendency is crushed, either through criticism or control, children develop a sense of
guilt.
• They may feel like a nuisance to others and will therefore remain followers, lacking in self-
initiative.
• At this stage the child will begin to ask many questions as his thirst for knowledge grows.
• If parents treat the child’s questions as trivial, a nuisance or embarrassing or other aspects
of their behaviour as threatening, then the child may have feelings of guilt for being a
nuisance.
• Too much guilt can make the child slow to interact with others and may inhibit their
creativity.
• Some guilt, is necessary however, as otherwise the child wouldn't know how to exercise self-
control or have a conscience.
• Healthy balance between initiative and guilt is important.
• Success in this stage - will lead to the virtue of purpose.

4. Industry ( competence) vs. inferiority (5-12 years old)

• Children are at the stage where they’ll be learning to read and write, to do sums, to do things
on their own.
• Teachers begin to take an important role in the child’s life as they teach the child specific
skills.
• The child’s peer group will gain greater significance and will become a major source of the
child’s self-esteem.
• Child now feels the need to win approval by demonstrating specific competencies that are
valued by society
• They also begin to develop a sense of pride in their accomplishments.
• If children are encouraged & reinforced for their initiative, they begin to feel industrious and
feel confident in their ability to achieve goals.
• If this initiative isnt encouraged & is restricted by parents or teacher, then the child begins to
feel inferior, doubting their own abilities. - therefore unable to reach his or her potential.
• If child cannot develop the specific skill, they feel society is demanding.
• Then they may develop a sense of inferiority.
• Some failure may be necessary so child can develop some modesty.
• A balance between competence and modesy is necessary.
• Success In this stage will lead to the virtue of competence.

5. Identity vs. Role Confusion ( age 12-18)

• Transition from childhood to adulthood - most important.

• Children become more independent and begins to look at the future in terms of relationships,
career, families etc.
• Individual wants to belong to a society and fit in.
• Major stage in development where child has to learn the roles he’ll occupy as an adult.
• It’s during this stage that the adolescent will re-examine his identity and try to find out who
exactly he/she is.
• Two identities are involved: sexual and occupational.
• According to Bee (1992) at the end of the stage, a reintegrated sense of self of what wants to
do or be, and of ones appropriate sex role.
 • During this stage, body image of the adolescent changes.

• Success in this stage will lead to the virtue of fidelity.

• Fidelity - involves being able to commit one’s self to others on the basis of accepting others,
even when they may be ideological differences.
• During this period, they explore possibilities and begin to form their own identity based upon
the outcome of their explorations.
• Failure to establish a sense of identity within society, can lead to role confusion.
• Role confusion - involves individual not being sure about themselves or their place in society.
• Response to role confusion/identity crisis, adoloscent may begin to experiment with diff.
lifestyles.
• Pressuring someone into an identity can result in rebellion in the form of establishing a
negative identity, and the feeling of unhappiness.
6. Intimacy Vs. Isolation (18-40 years)
• Occurs in young adulthood
• we begin to share ourselves more intimately with others.
• We explore relationships-leading towards longer term commitments with someone other than
a family member.
• Successful completion - lead to comfortable relationships, sense of commitment safety and
care within a relationship.
• Avoiding intimacy, fearing commitment and relationships - can lead to isolation, loneliness
and sometimes depression.
• Success in this stage - virtue of love.

7. Generativity vs. Stagnation (40-65 years)

• Establish our careers, settle down within a relationship, begin families and develop a sense of
being part of a bigger picture
• We give back to society through raising our children, being productive at work and becoming
involved in community activities , i.e. being generative.
• Failing to achieve these objectives- become stagnant and feel unproductive.
• Success - lead to the virtue of care.

8. Ego integrity vs. despair (65+ years)

• Become senior citizens, we tend to slow down our production and explore life as a retired
person
• During this time we contemplate our accomplishments and are able to develop integrity if we
see ourselves as leading a successful life.
• Erik Erikson- believed If we see our lives as unproductive, experience guilt about our past or
that we didn't accomplish our life goals - become dissatisfied with life and develop despair.
• Often leading to depression and hopelessness.
• Success in this stage - lead to virtue of Wisdom.
• Wisdom - enables person to look back in their life with sense of closure and completeness, and
also accept death without fear.

Evaluation

Strength:
• he was one of the first theorists to recognize that the whole of the lifespan was important and
didnt finish in adolescence , as suggested by Freud.
• Emphasis on rational and adaptive nature
• Emphasis on interaction of biological and social influences
• Influenced research into adolescence and adulthood
• good face validity. Many people find that they can relate to his theories about various stages of
the life cycle through their own experiences.

Weakness:
• much of his research was conducted on males and some female psychologists argue that the
theory is based on male values such as independence, whereas women may value
interdependence. The theory itself, is named ‘ Eight ages of man’.
• Although there's some research from the Sioux Dakota indians, much of Eriksons work was
gained from observations and interviews in Germany, Austria, and the USA .
• his theory was developed in 1963. This is a criticism as life in western society has changed
dramatically since that time; as there are delays in getting married, increase in divorce, delay
in having children, and people changing jobs more frequently.
• vague and difficult to test
• Describes human personality development but does not explain how development occurs

Vygotsky's theory of social development.

Social interaction plays a fundamental role in the process of cognitive development.
In contrast to Jean Piaget’s understanding of child development (in which development
necessarily precedes learning), Vygotsky felt social learning precedes development.
He states: “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social
level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then
inside the child.

Social Development Theory

• Social interaction influences cognitive development
• Biological and cultural development do not occur in isolation
• Language plays a major role in cognitive development.

Areas where social interaction can influence cognitive development

• Engagement between the teacher and student.
• Physical space and arrangement in learning environment.
• Meaningful instruction in small or whole groups.
• scaffolding/reciprocal teaching strategies.
• Zone of proximal development.

Zone Of Proximal Development

• Area of learning where the more knowledgeable other (MKO) assists the student in developing a higher
level of learning
• Goal is for the MKO to be less involved as the student develops he necessary skills.
• Vygotsky describes it as ‘ the distance between the actual development level as determined by
independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem
solving under adult guidance in collaboration with more capable peers.’
 • vygotsky focused on the connections between people and the sociocultural context in which they act and
interact in shared experiences.
• According to Vygotsky, humans use tools that develop from a culture, such as speech and writing, to
mediate their social environments.
• Initially children develop these tools to serve solely as social functions, ways to communicate needs.
Vygotsky believed that the internalization of these tools led to higher thinking skills.

Scaffolding
• Vygotsky defined scaffolding instruction as role of teachers and others in supporting the learners
development and providing support structures to get to that next stage or level.
• Teachers-provide scaffolds so that the learner can accomplish certain tasks they would otherwise not be
able to accomplish on their own.
• Goal of the educator is for the student to become an independent learner and problem solver.

Reciprocal teaching
• Used to improve a students ability to learn from text through the practice of four skills: summarizing,
clarifying, questioning and predicting.

Biological and cultural development

• Community plays a central role in the process of making meaning for the child.
Language
• Language plays a central role in mental development
• Language is the main means by which adult transmit information to children.
• Language itself becomes a very powerful tool of intellectual adaptations.

Vygotsky’s Theory Real life application

• Arrange student desk in clusters
• Arrange other work spaces for peer instructions, collaboration and small group instruction
• Scaffolding strategies
- Motivate the child’s interest in the task.
- Break the task down into manageable steps.
- Provide’s some direction to keep the child focused
- Reduce factors that cause frustration
- Model and define the expectations of the activity.
• Reciprocal stategies
• Vygotsky’s theory promotes learning contexts in which students play an active role in learning. Roles of
the teacher and student are therefore shifted, as a teacher should collaborate with his or her students in
order to help facilitate meaning construction in students. Learning therefore becomes a reciprocal
experience for the students and teacher.
• Lesson content that engages student
• Discussion questions
Wood and Middleton (1975)
Wanted to demonstrate the power of scaffolding for development between mothers and children
In advance, mothers were shown how to construct a pyramid from wooden blocks.
During the study their children then had to complete the task without direct help from their mother.
The following types of behaviours were identified from mothers
General verbal instuctions
 Specific verbal instruction
Drawing attention to materials
Preparation
Modeling
It was concluded that the mothers who changed their help on the basis of the child’s response were more
likely to have a child who later succeeded in the task.

Mindfulness enhancing social, emotional and cognitive development.

o Mindfulness - defined as paying attention in a non-judgmental way to one's experience of
here and now.

o Compassion for and curiosity about the world.

o Awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment w/
compassion and open-hearted curiosity.

o Can be adopted deliberately as part of a meditative exercise.

o 2013 study reported 0 brief mindfulness intervention increased healthy people's sense of
inner peace compared w/a control group.

o Control group did nothing – cannot exactly say whether significant positive effects in present
study were caused by mindfulness practice or just by non-specific support provided by a
weekly group

o 2011 review of 23 relevant studies – reported mindfulness training could have benefits for
people's attentional control and working memory.

o Mindfulness has a range of psychological benefits – reducing anxiety, greater feelings of life
having meaning.

o Systematic review from 2013 of 8 papers found mindfulness meditation and similar practices
could be beneficial to prison inmates (reducing anger, hostility)

o Aspects of mindfulness meditation – being incorporated into forms of therapy

o Meta- analysis & review from 2012 of controlled trials – found mindfulness based cognitive
therapy successfully helps prevent depression relapse.

o Trait mindfulness – people who are inclined to be mindful – have advantages over other
who are not.

o Students who are more mindful have higher self-esteem.

o People who score higher in trait mindfulness – tend to be more satisfied w/ their romantic
relationships respond better to relationship stress.

o Managers who are more mindful – higher performing staff. More satisfied w/job.

o More mindful- less susceptible to harmful effects of discrimination

o By helping people have more control over their minds - ability to ignore distractions,
through increased awareness of one's own body, improved control over one's own emotion,
ability to cope with unpleasant emotions and through changed perspective on the self.
 o Mindfulness-based approaches have shown to be effective for a range of healthy problems,
including anxiety disorders, eating disorders, depression and ADHD with many populations
including children, adolescents and adults.

o Mindful medication – helpful or even harmful for some people. Panic attacks and loss of
motivation.

o 2009 – documented in 12 published case studies and reviews of mindfulness

meditation.
o Mental health (anxiety, hallucinations), physical health (seizures, double
vision) and spiritual health (religious delusions)
o Meditation – primarily designed not to make us happier, but destroy our
sense of individual self.
o Mindfulness programmes are intensive and requires a motivated participant in
order for them to succeed
o They involve taught sessions and also homework sessions so it may not work for
everyone.
o They have a cost implication, and If they are being administered by a teacher, they
are reliant on this teacher’s skills and abilities which may result in inconsistent
effects if some arent as effective as others.

Contemporary study: Ashdown and Bernard (2012) Can explicit instruction in social
and emotional learning skills benefit the social and emotional development, well-
being and academic achievement of young children?
Aim:
o to test whether the ‘You can do it!’ Early childhood program (YCDI) has an effect
on the social-emotional development well-being and academic achievement of
preparatory school and grade 1 students
o Hypothesized- young children who receive YCDI program would display greater gain
in their levels of social and emotional competence, social and emotional well-being
and academic achievement.
Method:
o 45 females and 54 males used, 4 teachers from Catholic school, Melbourne
Australia
o School-identified as ‘low socio-economic statuses’ according to catholic education
office
o 1 prep class and 1 grade 1 class-randomly assigned to receive the YCDI curriculum
o YCDI program-delivered by regular classroom teachers, for over a 10-week time
period. Other prep class and grade 1 class didn't receive the program as they
served as a comparison group
o Teachers did implement the program after the study to avoid disadvantaging them
o All 4 teachers had to fill out 2 questionnaires for each pupil which were completed
before and after YCDI program, at similar times for the non YCDI students
 o ACER well-being survey: tested pupil’s social and emotional well-being and social
and emotional competence.
o This questionnaire was validated by data provided by over 6000 teachers. The
social skills rating system measured social skills, problem behaviours and academic
competence.
o The test had been shown to have high internal reliability and test-retest reliability.
Observers watched teachers deliver the lessons to determine how the material
were being delivered.
results:
o found were that children in the YCDI displayed significantly greater gains in
teacher-rated levels of social-emotional competence and also in social skills than
pupils who didn’t receive the program.
o The findings were also greater for pupils in grade 1. YCDI pupils scored higher on
social-emotional well-being, with the grade 1 making the greatest gains.
o There was no evidence however that YCDI had an impact on reduction of total
problem behaviours in prep pupils, but grade 1 pupils did reduce these more
significantly compared to non-YCDI pupils.
o There were no differences between males and females or between pupils who
spoke different languages on social-emotional competence or well being.
Evaluation
strength

it supports previous research which indicated that social and emotional well-being
instruction do have an impact on children’s social and emotional skills.

They also observed the teachers who were delivering the lessons and the teachers
were also trained for the program. This increases reliability of the experiment and
ensures that all students were receiving the program correctly.
Weakness

However, only one school in Melbourne Australia was used, which was also in a low
socio-economic area. Therefore, it lacks population and thus, generalizability. We
do not know for sure that same results will be found in a different city or country,
and with students of a different status.

As well as, the teachers were aware whether they were in the YCDI or non-YCDI
group, which may have led to unreliable findings as the teachers might have
answered the questionnaires through a biased point of view, hence affecting the
overall findings.

In conclusion, although we can criticize the fact that the teachers might have been
biased for their answers given in the questionnaire, the questionnaires were in fact
shown to have high internal reliability and was validated by data therefore, making
the study reliable in general and proving that YCDI does consequently, impact
learning of the students.

Methodology

The Observational Research Method – Observational research involves watching people or animals
in a particular situation and recording in some way what takes place. It can be carried out in two
days – Naturalistic or Structured:

• Naturalistic Observation – taking place in the usual environment for the individual – for a
child this may be a home, school or nursery. Observation may be overt (ppt aware they
are being observed) or covert (unaware e.g. by a two-way mirror). Mary Ainsworth
observed babies playing in their own homes – this allows observers to see a natural
response in a natural environment. However Naturalistic observations are difficult to
control.

Evaluative Points:
• High in ecological validity – Real life situation – so accurate data.
• Covert Observations increase ecological validity, in addition to internal and external
validity.
• Useful in child psychology – can see natural bonding and establishment of
attachment.
• It is difficult to repeat as it is not replicable. Impossible to control the variables.
• Ethics – Ensure that parents give full permission to be watched.
• Public observation can cause problems as well. May upset the person unaware of them
being observed.

• Structured Observation – Takes place when the researcher defines in advance exactly
what behaviours they are looking for and sets-up the situation in which the opportunity to
display those behaviours is standardised fir anyone being observed. E.g. Ainsworth’s
Strange Situation. This measures the attachment type in children by setting up a
sequence of events in each we can note the child’s attachment. Later stages are used to
test separation anxiety and reunion response.

Evaluative Points:
• They generate numerical data and so allow as to use statistical data.
• Recreates situation of a naturalistic observation, so that natural behaviour is observed
(ecologically valid).
• Structured observations are often reliable as they produce the same results.
• A replicable design – so can test for consistent results.
• Good predictive Validity – Often correct in predicting outcome of results.
• Good inter-rater reliability in the case of the strange situation.
• A too highly structured observation may be artificial and ceases to represent natural
situation.
• Never a complete natural environment so ecological validity is reduced.
• Ethically poor – May put stress on the child esp. with relation to strange situation.
• Consider the balance between stress and benefit to society. However mothers in
strange situation can remove their child at any point if they feel the child is under too
much stress.

Cross cultural Research -

Research carried out in different cultures/countries and then comparisons are made. The purpose
is to identify if behaviour is universal. This indicates whether behaviour is a result of nature
(biological) or nurture – the way the child has been brought up.

Evaluation-

- This is the main way of studying whether behaviour is due to nature or nurture. Also
establishes whether behaviour is innate.
- May be ethnocentric – this means a researcher interprets findings based on own culture.
However cross cultural research may aim to eliminate this.
- Ensures reliability as the same methods are used, and identifies whether traits are
universal.
- Procedure may be understood differently in different cultures – this may lead to differences
in findings.
- Can be invasive and some studies can’t be replicated culturally e.g. Ainsworth strange
situation in Japan and they are hardly away from mother all would be type A and this would be
seen as a bad thing but in fact it is just part of the culture.

Longitudinal studies
The best way to study children at different ages is by a longitudinal design. This involves
following up a group of children over an extended time.
• Particularly useful at following up children who fall in particular categories at a young
age e.g. attachment type. If we know the attachment classification of a group of
babies, we can follow the development of that group into adulthood and see how they
turn out – e.g. by assessing their adult relationships and if it was shaped in any way by
their own attachment type as a child.
• Possible to assess the attachment type retrospectively in adulthood, but less valid way
of measuring infant attachment.
• Same participants so there is control over participant variables
• It also causes attrition which is the loss of participants during the course of the study –
ppts move away and not leave contact details, or simply pull out. Sometimes attrition
rates can be so high that studies are entirely abandoned. Takes long time
• Time consuming and expensive – possibility of drop outs
• Difficult to replicate as it is conducted over such a length of time.
• Large sample required to draw conclusions

Case studies -
Detailed investigations of one person/a small group of people. Case studies use a range of
methods to collect their data e.g. interviews, observations, psychological tests, experimentation.
Data can be qualitative and quantitative. Case studies are used for unique cases or topic areas
where it is inappropriate to study experimentally e.g. privation. The case of Genie used the case
study method where observations, interviews and language tests were conducted to see whether
she could overcome the effects of privation.

• Validity – is high, as information collected is in depth and a detailed record can be created. As
different methods are used to study the behaviour if they have the same outcome it is
considered valid
• Problems with reliability – Cannot replicate as each case is different.
• Also cannot reach a judgement on something as often the results are completely different. E.g.
one cannot say that privation reliably leads to a particular outcome as different outcomes
of Genie and Czech twins
• Not replicable as ethical issues mean we are unable to replicate stress such as that of
privation.
• It is impossible to replicate stress of the same degree as it will be nowhere near as traumatic as
real life
• Generalizability – one & unique cases so difficult to apply to others
• Reliability – researcher bias and subjectivity may limit reliability; however triangulation may
increase reliability and increase objectivity.
Ethics:Great ethical strength –recording real life events that have happened in detail with no
situation set up.
• Gathering data against the will of the individual e.g. with Genie – researchers looked after
her and arguably failed her in parenting, as they should not have been doing this.-
Privacy of individuals – Respect their privacy by using initials and not publishing photos
• used when it would be unethical to test experimentally. Genie is an example of a topic area
that can be studied using a case study; however also shows how the ethical issues are often
broken e.g. protection from harm

Genie
Case History:
-Rescued at the age of 13 when her mother ran away and took her to social services.
-Genie had very little speech and was afraid of adults.
-Initially fostered by a special needs teacher and then by one of the psychologists studying
her.
-Developing language (Steadily increasing vocabulary, no grammatically correct sentences) +
attachment to carers
- Continued to display extreme anxiety
-Research funding terminated – psychologists returned her to social services and cared for in
a succession of foster homes.
-Physically abused again in one of her foster homes and regressed to the state she was in
when first rescued.
-Settled in with an adult foster-carer who did not wish her to have anything to do with
psychologists again
Interpretation:
-Genie suffered privation as the result of being forcibly separated from her mother and
being isolated from all human interaction.
-Both emotional and cognitive damage.
Evaluation:
+The reports on Genie form a richly-detailed case study, with good quantitative and qualitative
data.
+Evidence to support that privation is not reversible, and the effects are detrimental to a
person.
-Difficult to generalise from case studies. -There were strong suggestions that Genie may have
had developmental problems in infancy, it was not possible to say that her subsequent failure to
develop normally was due solely to her experiences.
-Also it was not known how much, if any, language stimulation Genie had received during her
years of abusive confinement. In any case, because there was a strong suggestion that Genie may
have had developmental problems in infancy, it was not possible to say that her subsequent
failure to develop normally was due solely to her experiences.
 -Ethical Considerations:
- She was not offered the opportunity to give her consent to the studies – though she
may not have understood if it had been offered to her. However, the researchers
undoubtedly gave Genie a very high level of care.  
-She was given a pseudonym to protect her identity but the broadcast of some of the
film of her (without permission) increased the likelihood that someone would recognise
her.
-The case of the Czech twins by Koluchova provides evidence to support the idea that privation is
reversible. This may be down to the fact that the twins experienced care with their aunt or by the
fact they were rescued at an earlier age.
Rescued at an early age and being able to learn language - demonstrates that there is a critical
period for learning language, supports chomsky.

Observations
Naturalistic: These observe children in their natural environment e.g. a playground.
Evaluation -
- Behaviour is more likely to be natural so it has high ecological and no demand
characteristics as the child is unaware they are being studied.
- However naturalistic observations are unreliable, as they cannot control extraneous
variables which may occur in the child’s environment so cannot be replicated
- Ethically, naturalistic observations usually involve studying participants in their natural
environment so do not require informed consent however, this does not apply when observing
children so consent must be gained if studying child behaviour in a playground.
Structured: These take place in an environment that has been set up for the purpose of the
observation. E.g. Strange situation
Evaluation -
- More reliable as the researcher has control over extraneous variables and the procedure can
be repeated as it is standardised.
- A problem of structured observations is that it may result in demand characteristics as the
environment may be different and the child respond in a different way. As the behaviour may be
different, this means it will lack ecological validity.

Clinical interviewing in developmental psychology to understand the world of the

child.

Interviews are face-to-face situations involving a series of questions.

Interviews allow the opportunity for the participant and researcher to expand on question or
clarify to gather data accurately.
Interviewers in child psychology need training priot to interviewing a child and when
interviewing, the interviewer must ensure that extra care is taken.
Younger children have shorter attention span and so expecting children to sit still for a lengthy
interview is inappropriate.
Interviewers need to adjust their language to suit a younger, more vulnerable group of people
such as children.
Interviewer effect- can be especially relevant in the field of psychology.
The physical appearance of the interviewer and other characteristics could influence the ay a
child responds to questions e.g. gender
Demand characteristics- subtle cues that the interviewer may give as to what and how they want
to find out from interviewees.
Ppts may alter their responses to conform to these perceived expectations and this will have a
profound influence on results obtained.

In child development studies, interview methods have been used with various types of
participants, most notably children, parents, and teachers, to investigate many aspects of
development, and to address a wide range of theoretical and applied issues.

Interviews versus other methods for developmental research

Once children are old enough to use and understand language reasonably proficiently,
experimental studies on their cognitive development will often incorporate aspects of the
interview method, in that the researcher will ask questions in the context of a structured,
specially designed task that will typically involve both verbal and non-verbal activities. Similarly,
while interview methods tend to be more constrained, focused, and artificial than observational
methods, the data obtained from observations of children interacting with adults (especially in
classroom settings) will often include question-and-answer sequences that have much in common
with those that occur in interviews.

Piaget and his interview method

interview methods for studying cognitive development have their origins in the work of Jean
Piaget (1896-1980). Piaget’s central aim in interviewing children was to uncover and describe
their cognitive structures (i.e., the general principles underpinning their knowledge, reasoning,
and understanding). He therefore adopted an approach that had much in common with that used
by psychiatrists in diagnostic interviews, and that has therefore become known as the ‘clinical
(interview) method’. He wanted to encourage children to talk freely about particular topics, so
rather than asking a standard set of questions to all children, he based his questions on the
individual child’s responses to previous questions.
Subsequent research on cognitive development has been heavily influenced by Piaget’s
pioneering work, so interview methods have continued to figure prominently. There has been an
increasing tendency, though, to follow a pre-determined script in which the questions are the
same (or at least similar) for all children. This type of interview method is generally referred to
as ‘non-clinical’, but the distinction between clinical and non-clinical methods is probably best
regarded as being a matter of degree.

Clinical interview method

Piaget (1929) emphasized that in conducting such interviews, the researcher has to try to avoid
leading the child in a particular direction through suggestion, while at the same time making the
most of opportunities to formulate and test hypotheses about the nature of the child’s
understanding. Similarly, in interpreting children’s answers, it is important to avoid the two
extremes of assuming either that all answers are ‘pure gold’ (i.e., can be taken entirely at face
value), or that they are all ‘dross’ (i.e., are of no value whatsoever). Instead, Piaget advises
researchers to consider carefully the status of individual responses.

Strengths and weaknesses of interview methods

Piaget (1929) was not interested in how many correct answers the children gave as in the types
of errors they made and what these might reveal about their underlying cognitive processes.
standard tests were not well suited to his aim of exploring children’s thinking in depth. For
example, since the questions always had to be asked in the same way, it was hard to tell whether
the particular way a question was worded had influenced the child’s answer.
Piaget’s clinical method was designed to create a less artificial and broader context in which
the researcher could probe the basis of the child’s answers.
By considering children’s answers in context, the clinical method preserves one of the key
advantages of observational methods.
before conducting clinical interviews, the researcher should engage in ‘pure observation’ of
children’s spontaneous questions, and use this as a basis for deciding on the types of questions to
ask in the interviews.
the clinical method enables researchers to exercise a greater degree of control than
observational methods do, in that they can ask questions in order to test their hypotheses about
the nature of the child’s reasoning, and in order to encourage the child to consider issues that
might not arise spontaneously.

On the other hand

Conducting clinical interviews and interpreting children’s responses requires high levels of skill,
sensitivity, and experience on the part of the researcher.
Piaget recommended at least a year of daily practice!
The heavy reliance on the individual researcher’s skill and intuitions, as well as the inevitable
variations in the form of the interview from child to child, raises concerns about the
generalizability and replicability of findings.
These are some of the reasons why more recent research has tended to employ non-clinical
interview methods, which involve a greater degree of structure and uniformity in the questions
asked.
Non-clinical interview methods, like clinical interview methods, occupy an intermediate position
relative to observational methods and psychometric tests, and hence enable researchers to
exercise more control over the direction and focus of their investigation than observational
methods would allow, but within a more natural and flexible context than is typical of
psychometric tests. Non-clinical interviews lie somewhat closer to psychometric tests than
clinical interviews do because they use a more structured and predetermined schedule of
questions.
The higher degree of structure in non-clinical interviews, compared to clinical interviews, brings both
advantages and disadvantages. Non-clinical interviews are more readily compatible with the research
paradigms, methods of statistical analysis, and scientific reporting styles that are dominant in contemporary
experimental psychology. It is easier to compare findings, both across studies and within a study (e.g.,
between different age groups of children). On the other hand, there is usually less opportunity to pursue
lines of questioning that an individual child’s answers suggest might be interesting.
if the interview script is very rigid, it can be difficult to resolve the confusions that may arise if a child
misunderstands a particular question, and it can be difficult to make the sequence of questions flow
naturally if a child gives an unexpected answer.
In practice, though, most interviewers aim to achieve an appropriate balance between consistency and
flexibility, rather than adhering to an absolutely rigid script.
One of the potential advantages of interviews (both clinical and non-clinical) as a method for studying
children’s understanding is that they are based on the intrinsically meaningful activity of answering
questions, an activity with which children are familiar from their everyday conversations.
However, while the similarity between interview methods and everyday conversations may help children to
feel at ease and to grasp the basic nature of what they are expected to do, it may also mislead them into
carrying over strategies that are appropriate in a conversational context but inappropriate in the more
constrained, artificial context of a research study.

Ethnographic field work including Punch in Bolivia (2002) and longitudinal/cross-sectional

research in developmental psychology.

Ethnography, or observational research, studies cultures in which some groups of people share.

Its an alternative to qualitative data analysis, and Is commonly conducted through a single investigator who
immerses themselves into the culture for a long period of time and observes the culture from within.

Participant observation: long term engagement in the field setting or place where the ethnography takes
place.

Ethnography produces qualitative data, rich and detailed information, because it seeks to understand and
describe the natural social world as it really is.

Researcher must both become a participant in the life of the setting, while also maintaining the stance of an
observer.
Ethnographic interview:looks and feels little different than the everyday conversation and indeed in the
course of long-term participant observation, most conversations are in fact purely spontaneous and without
any specific agenda.

An ethnographic understanding is developed through close exploration of several sources of data.

Using these data as a foundation, the ethnographer relies on a cultural frame of analysis.

Ethnographers generate understandings of culture through representation of an emic perspective, i.e.

’insiders point of view’

Advantages:

Provide extensive and in-depth findings about human behaviour.

Ethnographic research relies on observation rather than examinations or predetermined tests, the
researcher can evolve and explore new lines of injury, has high ecological validity.

Disadvantages:

Relies on observation, it often takes a longer period of time to produce thorough and reliable results.

Research is reliant upon the observations of just one or a few people, the conclusions about what the
human subjects were doing, and saying or feeling could be altered by the observer’s cultural bias or
ignorance.

Participants could alter their behaviour, unnatural behaviour, because they want to look good (socially
desirable bias) thus inaccurate and invalid findings which lack ecological validity.

Presence of researcher as a participant could raise demand characteristics and influence the real
participants behaviour.

Punch’s ethnographic work in Bolivia

Punch’s work is based on ethnographic research carried out in a rural community

The study focused on childrens negotiation of their autonomy at home, school, at work and at play.

During the fieldwork, punch lived for two extended periods in the rural community.

She used a range of qualitative methods including informal and semi-structured interviews and semi-
participant observation with most members of a sample of eighteen households.

Full participant observation- with children is impossible for adults. So semi participant observer role was
more suitable

It enabled the researcher to participate in children’s activities to a certain extent whilst recognizing that
they’re limits to such participants.

She could join the games but she was a different player who was given special attention since adults do not
usually play with them.

Cross-cultural research
Research carried out in different cultures/countries and then comparisons are made. The purpose
is to identify if behaviour is universal. This indicates whether behaviour is a result of nature
(biological) or nurture – the way the child has been brought up.

Evaluation
Strength
This is the main way of studying whether behaviour is due to nature or nurture. Also
establishes whether behaviour is innate.
May be ethnocentric – this means a researcher interprets findings based on own culture.
However cross cultural research may aim to eliminate this.
Ensures reliability as the same methods are used, and identifies whether traits are universal.
use of meta-analysis using cross-cultural research to draw conclusions about the universality of
attachment types.

Weakness
Procedure may be understood differently in different cultures – this may lead to differences in
findings.
Can be invasive and some studies can’t be replicated culturally e.g. Ainsworth strange
situation in Japan and they are hardly away from mother all would be type A and this would
be seen as a bad thing but in fact it is just part of the culture.

Ethics and the UNCRC (1989)

Participation versus protection rights and research.
BPS code of ethics outlines what British psychologists must adhere to when undertaking research. Guidlines
are given under the headings of respect, competence, integrity and responsibility.
1. Deception
Participants must be told more or less what they are doing so that they are not completely
deceived by the experiment.
It could make them feel bad after the experiment has taken place.
2. Debrief
Participants must be told that they have the right to remove themselves or any of their data from
the study.
They are also have the opportunity to talk to the experimenters to know the true aims of the
study.
3. Right To Withdraw
The participants are told that they can remove themselves from the study at any time.
They are told how to withdraw and how to not be harmed when withdrawing.
although parents have the rights to withdraw their child from the study, children also have
the rights to withdraw
Informed Consent
Participants may only participate if they have consented to take part before the study, knowing
all the information involved.
Parent consent must be gained before carrying out any observations or gaining any
information.
Protection From Psychological Harm
Participants must be managed so that they exit the study unharmed.
They are made sure that they are unaffected.
• child’s safety and emotional state must be a priority during the research.

Privacy
Participants have the right to know who will read their results in a report.
They have the right to remain anonymous.
Researchers can’t invade their personal life.
• important that all details regarding the chid are kept confidential and the identity of the
child is protected

These guidelines protect all participants but they’re particularly important when children are
concerned: protection from harm, informed consent, confidentiality, an deception are important.

● Ethical issues when children are the participants.

Any research involving children should adhere to the UN convention on the rights of the child.

Governments across the world promised all children the same rights by adopting the UNCRC, which offers
guidelines as to what countries should do to ensure children grow up as healthy as possible, can learn at
school and are protected

Articles governing the convention include: the best interests of the child must be a top priority. Every child
has the right to privacy and government must protect children from all other forms of bad treatment.

 Research in developmental psychology- imposes challenges and particular ethical dilemmas for
researchers, esp. When children and adolescents are concerned.

 Often links drawn in psychology between childhood experiences and psychological well-being

 Essential that children are used in psychological research in order to gain a better understanding of
how brain and mind develops

 Children – vulnerable to psychological or physical harm than adults.

 BPS code of ethics-outlines what British psychologists must adhere when undertaking research
before approved

 Research must lie under categories of respect, competence, integrity and responsibility.

 Protection from harm, informed consent, confidentiality and deception – important

 Best interest of the child must be a top priority

 UNCRC – children have right to be consulted, to have access to info, freedom of speech etc.

 Researchers need to stress clearly the potential benefits, I.e. the risks and costs if research isnt
carried out.

 BPS guidelines specify that p's shouldn’t be distressed or harmed.

 Children's participation – should consider UNCRC

 Must make sure they are competent enough to deal w/any issues that arise w/children

 Strange situation – criticized on ethical grounds, due to distress caused to the children on separation
of parents

 Cultural variations of experiment – did not take into consideration the influences of cultural
differences on the degree of separation anxiety.

 In this case – unlikely children suffered any prolonged effects of the distress.
  Genies case – although researchers communicated w/her, taught her sign language, put her in a
friendly environment

 Ethical issue – genie wasn’t able to withdraw from the study due to her limited use of
language and mental state.

 Psychological wellbeing not considered, no rights to withdraw, no protection from harm

 Name kept anonymous – her study was exposed to the entire world to read about her case.

 Genie was exploited and exposed to a lot of psychological stress, and her psychological well-
being wasn’t considered

 Researchers had personal attachments to genie – inappropriate for researchers, leading to

the next question of objectivity and aims of the study

 Anonymity for genie, confidentiality, provides detailed info.

 Little albert – child was knowingly subjected to psychogical harm in the form of conditioning to fear
of a neutral stimulus.

 Researchers were not able to desensitize the child in order to eliminate his fear

 Ainsworth –observers were trained to recognize intense distress and stop procedure if they feel
child will become more than momentarily upset.

 Unlikely children suffered pro-longed effects of this distress.

ISSUES AND DEBATES

Ethics
Key issue for researchers is balancing children’s participation in research against guidelines and
the UNCRC. Researchers need to consider risks or costs, time taken, inconvenience, intrusion of
privacy, etc.
Researchers need to stress clearly the potential benefits of their work and take the required
steps to reduce or prevent any risks.
They may consider a small-scale pilot study to address these issues before engaging in full-scale
research.
Practical Issues in the design and implementation
Meta-analyses pose several problems for researchers.
All the methodological problems and biases associated with the initial studies will transfer to the
meta-analysis. therefore, only methodologically sound studies should be included.
Another pitfall is the file-drawer effect. There is a bias within the scientific community to publish
studies that only reveal a positive result, that is they support the original hypothesis.
Studies that find no significant findings are less likely to be published but instead get filed away.
As a result, meta-analysis can be seen as biased or skewed and researchers should seriously
consider this issue when interpreting the outcomes of a meta-analysis.
Psychology as a science
Case studies of children who have suffered privation are rare, unique, and by definition limited to
one person. This means the findings of such research lack generalisability. Therefore we cannot
be certain whether the effects of privation for that particular individual would be the same for
anyone in such extreme cases.
Research into the effects of institutional care are natural experiments bc whether or not a child
is fostered, adopted or remain in the institution isn't under the control of the researchers
This means that the children cannot be random allocated to an experimental condition which is a
requirement of a true experiment.

Ethics and socially sensitive research

As Butler couldnt provide adequate care for genie, she was removed from butler’s care and
placed in the family home of one of genie’s therapists and head of the research team
Genie was exposed to a no. of cognitive tests, brain scans and treatments to improve her
emotional and social skills.
Some claimed that she was overexposed to testing and this was inappropriate for a vulnerable
child.
Once the project funding for genie ran out, and further grant extensions denied, genie went back
to the care of her mother. Genies mother couldn't cope with her so she returned to foster care.
There’s a continued speculation about whether the researchers were appropriately placed to
provide both therapeutic and foster care, and whether the career ambitions of some of the
researchers was placed ahead of the welfare of this child.