PSYCH 2103: Module 1

In a psychotherapy session, Adrienne talks with her therapist about the stress of raising two young children who are involved in competitive sports and preparing for standardized tests, while caring for her elderly parents who are experiencing ill health, including early signs of dementia. Adrienne's therapist normalizes her experience as part of the "sandwiched generation," sandwiched between caring for young kids and aging parents. Adrienne is in the ________ period of human development.

Middle adulthood

To examine the effectiveness of two types of interventions for anxiety, researchers randomly assigned participants to a 12-week course of cognitive-behavioral therapy, a 12-week mindfulness-based stress reduction program, or a waitlist control group. The researchers administered a standardized measure of anxiety to participants before and after the interventions or waitlist period. In this experiment, what is the dependent variable?

Anxiety

A researcher conducted an in depth study of a child who was raised in isolation and had no contact with same-age peers until age 10. This researcher detailed the child's development in a number of spheres: physical/motor, language/cognitive, social and emotional. What kind of research method is this?

Case study

In a study of children, let's suppose that researchers found a positive correlation (r= .63) between creativity and resilience. How is this finding interpreted?

Children who score higher on measures of creativity also score higher on measures of resilience.

Parents track the number of new words their toddler learns each day and are surprised by how many new words their child has learned at the end of one month. By charting their child's language development, these parents are showing an interest in the ________ of human development.

Cognitive domain

A graduate student research team is giving an oral presentation of their research on self-efficacy and resilience in young adults. They note that a limitation of their study is that participants were recruited from the university that they attend. What makes this a study limitation?

College students are samples of convenience that are not randomly selected from the wider population and may not represent all young adults in our society.

A team of researchers are interested in studying changes in parenting style over time, as children and parents grow older. One researcher states, "If we choose a ________, then it would be less time consuming and expensive. Another researcher comments, "If we choose that design, then we have measurements of parenting style for one point in time, and we can't be sure about changes with age over time." They are discussing the advantages and disadvantages of which research design?

Cross-sectional research design

In order to minimize attrition in studies with infants and children, researchers are advised to ________.

Design the study to be as short as possible

Childcare practices differ across cultures, and different practices have been found to influence when and how children reach certain developmental milestones, such as sitting, crawling, and walking. Which approach to human development is conveyed by this finding?

Development can follow a different course for each child.

In a study of the effect of playing video games on sleep quality, researchers randomly assigned some participants to play an up-tempo video game for either one or three hours before bed. Other participants had no engagement with electronics in the time before bed. Then, the researchers assessed all the participants' sleep quality (e.g., number of awakenings, percentage of time in deep sleep) during an overnight sleep study. In this experiment, the time spent playing video games (e.g., one or three hours) is the ________.

Independent variable

A theorist proposes that children learn language by observing and imitating their parents, who in turn reinforce the sounds and words their children produce. In the nature versus nurture debate, where does this theorist's proposal fit?

Nurture

In a study of empathy across young adulthood to older adulthood, researchers found a negative correlation (r= -.75) between empathy and age. How is this finding interpreted?

Older adults tended to have lower empathy scores than younger adults.

A pediatrician provides parents with a chart that plots changes in their child's height and weight over time. This growth chart represents a ________ in human development.

Physical domain

A counselor is conducting an initial evaluation with a client and asks questions to better understand the client's feelings, relationships, identity, and personality. This counselor is exploring the ________ of human development.

Psychosocial domain

A researcher wants to understand parents' attitudes and opinions toward residential school programs for academically gifted students. This researcher would likely choose a ________ research method.

Survey

Parenting advice from researchers has changed over time. Consider changes in recommendations for safe sleeping positions for infants. This demonstrates which value of the scientific method?

The scientific method allows for continuous updating of information to support best practices.

Researchers build upon each other's work by following up on suggested directions for future research and addressing limitations of previous studies. For example, a researcher might extend a study that was originally conducted with an urban sample to include people living in suburban and rural areas. Which value of the scientific method does this demonstrate?

The scientific method facilitates the establishment of a literature or knowledge base.

Suppose a group of researchers wants to investigate the relationship between daily mindfulness meditation and cortisol (stress hormone) levels in the body over a 20-year time period. Which research design would allow them to measure changes with age and within individuals over time, even though it would be expensive, limited to one cohort, take a long time, and they might have people drop out of the study?

Longitudinal research design

A group of friends get together and their conversation revolves around love and work: relationships, planning for future marriage and children, finishing formal education and establishing their careers, developing independence, and feeling like an adult. This group of friends is in the ________ period of human development.

early adulthood

Thompson uses observation and surveys to study how much time children spend playing outside. The objective of this research is to ________.

Describe the occurrence of time spent playing outside