This document contains all the exam questions and the answers that have been presented in the exam papers. Unisa has confirmed that 6 of these questions will be asked in the exams.
Answer:
Some theorists believe that development is a smooth, continuous process and that children
gradually add more of the same types of skills as they grow. Other theorists think that
development takes place in discontinuous stages, like climbing developmental stairs. This
means that children change rapidly as they step up to a new level of development and then
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change very little for a while. With each step, the child interprets and responds to the world in a
qualitatively different way.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory states that both continuous and discontinuous development
takes place. Language acquisition and schooling lead to stage wise changes while dialogs with
more expert members of society lead to continuous changes that vary from culture to culture.
The Information-processing approach states that children’s development is continuous and that
children gradually improve in perception, attention, memory and problem-solving skills.
Regarding the question if development follows one course or many, the field of child
development is becoming increasingly aware that children grow up in distinct contexts. Stage
theorists assume that people everywhere follow the same sequence of development while
contemporary theorists regard the contexts that mould development as many-layered and
complex.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory states that development follows many possible courses and that
socially mediated changes in thought and behaviour vary from culture to culture.
The Information-processing approach advocates only one course of development and that
changed studied characterise most or all children.
In addition to describing the course of development, each theory takes a stand on a major
question about its underlying cause: Are genetics or environmental factors more important in
influencing development? This is the age-old nature vs. nurture controversy. By nature we refer
to inborn biological givens – the hereditary information we receive from our parents at the
moment of conception. By nurture, we mean the complex forces of the physical and social world
that influence our biological makeup and psychological experiences before and after birth.
A theory’s position on the roles of nature and nurture affects how it explains individual
differences. Some theorists emphasise stability – that children who are high or low in a
characteristic will remain so at later ages. These theorists typically stress the importance of
heredity. Other theorists see development as having substantial plasticity thought life.
Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory and the Information-processing approach state that both nature
and nurture influence development. Vygotsky believes that heredity, brain growth, and dialogs
with more expert members of society jointly contribute. The Information-processing approach
says that children are active, sense-making beings who modify their thinking as the brain grows
and they confront new environmental demands. Both theories state that early and later
experiences are important.
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Answer:
Reliability refers to the consistency or repeatability of measure of behaviour, while validity
means that the research method must accurately measure the characteristics that the
researcher set out to measure.
Systematic Observation
This research method consists of naturalistic observation and structured observation.
Naturalistic observation involves going in the field, or natural environment and recording the
behaviour of interest. The advantage of this method is that it reflects participants’ everyday
behaviours in their natural setting. The method however has some major limitations. Not all
children have the same opportunity to display a particular behaviour in everyday life and some
children have had more exposure to a certain situation. Another limitation is that the researcher
cannot control the conditions under which the participants are observed.
Structured observation differs from naturalistic observation in that this method involves the
investigator setting up a laboratory situation that evokes the behaviour of interest so that every
participant has an equal opportunity to display the response.
A major problem with systematic observation is observer influence. The presence of a watchful,
unfamiliar individual may cause both children and adults to act in unnatural ways. Another
problem is observer bias. When observers are aware of the purpose of the study, they may see
and record what they expect to see rather than what the participants do.
Self-reports ask research participants to provide information on their perceptions, thoughts,
abilities, feeling, attitudes, beliefs and past experiences. They range from relatively unstructured
clinical interviews (the method used by Piaget to study children’s thinking) to highly structured
interviews, questionnaires and tests.
In the clinical interview, researches use a flexible, conversational style to probe for the
participants’ point of view. This method has two major strengths. First, it permits people to
display their thoughts in terms that are as close as possible to the way in which they think in
everyday life. Second, the clinical interview can provide a large amount of information in a fairly
brief period.
There is however a major limitation to this method, which has to do with the accuracy with which
people report their thoughts, feelings and experiences. Some people answer in a way to try and
please the interviewer, while others have trouble recalling exactly what happened. Children may
also have difficulty putting their thoughts into words due to their limited verbal ability and
expressiveness.
In a structured interview, each individual is asked the same set of questions in the same way.
This approach eliminates the possibility that an interviewer might press and prompt some
participants more than others. Structured interviews are also much more efficient than clinical
interviews. Answers are briefer and researches can obtain written responses from an entire
group at the same time. Nevertheless, structured interviews can still be affected by inaccurate
reporting, and they do not yield the same depth of information as a clinical interview.
Neurobiological methods
Neurobiological methods measure the relationship between nervous system processes and
behaviour. This method helps researchers infer the perceptions, thoughts and emotions of
infants and young children who cannot report their psychological experiences clearly. The
following methods are used for measuring brain function: EEG, ERP’s, fMIR, PET and NIRS.
Even though this method is a powerful tool for uncovering relationships between the brain and
psychological development, it still has limitations. Although a stimulus produces a consistent
pattern of autonomic brain activity, investigators cannot be certain that an individual has
processed it in a certain way. The researcher who takes a change in heart rate, respiration, or
brain activity as an indicator of information processing or emotional state must make sure that
the change was not due instead to hunger, boredom, fatigue or body movements.
This method brings together a wide range of information on one child, including interviews,
observations, test scores, and sometimes neurobiological measures. The aim is to obtain as
complete a picture as possible of that child’s psychological functioning and the experiences that
lead up to it. The clinical is well-suited to study the development of certain types of individuals
who are few in number but vary widely in characteristics. This method yields richly detailed case
narratives that offer valuable insights into the many factors affecting development.
Nevertheless, it still has drawbacks. Because information is often collected unsystematically and
subjectively, researches theoretical preferences may bias their observations and interpretations.
In addition, investigators cannot assume that their conclusions apply, or generalise, to anyone
other than the child studied.
Methods for Studying Culture
To study the impact of culture, researches adjust the methods just considered or tap procedures
specially devised for cross-cultural and multicultural research. Which approach investigators
choose depends on their research goals. Sometimes researchers are interested in
characteristics that are believed to be universal but that vary in degree from culture to culture.
At other times, researchers want to uncover the cultural meanings of children and adult
behaviour by becoming as familiar as possible with their way of life. To achieve this goal,
investigators rely on the ethnography. Like the clinical method, ethnographic research is a
descriptive, qualitative technique, but instead of aiming to understand a single individual, it is
directed at understanding a culture or distinct social group through participant observation.
Ethnographers strive to minimise their influence on the culture they are studying by becoming a
part of it. There are nevertheless still limitations to this method in that the investigators cultural
values and theoretical commitments sometimes lead them to observe selectively or misinterpret
what they see. These findings can also not be assumed to generalise beyond the people and
setting in which the research was conducted.
Answer:
A newborn baby has a wide variety of capabilities that are crucial for survival and for evoking
care and attention from adults. In relating to their physical and social worlds, babies are active
from the very start.
Babies are born with many reflexes. A reflex is an inborn, automatic response to a particular
form of stimulation. Reflexes are the infants’ most obvious organised pattern of behaviour.
Some reflexes have survival value. For example, the rooting reflex helps a baby find the nipple,
while the swimming reflex helps a baby who is accidentally dropped into water stay afloat,
increasing the chances of retrieval by the caregiver. Many other reflexes probably helped babies
survive during our evolutionary past. These would include the Moro reflex and the palmar grasp
reflex which would have assisted the baby to regain her hold on her mother's’ body.
From birth, babies can also communicate with others through crying. Crying lets the parents
know when the baby needs food, comfort, sleep or stimulation. A baby’s cry is a complex
auditory stimulus that varies in intensity from a whimper to a message of all-out-distress. As
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early as the first few weeks, infants can be identified by the unique vocal ‘signature’ of their
cries, which helps parents locate their baby from a distance. Young infants usual cry because of
their physical needs. Hunger is the most common cause, but babies may cry for many reasons,
like a temperature change when clothing is removed, a sudden loud noise, or pain. An infants’
state also affects the proneness to cry. A stimulus which is usually enjoyed may result in tears
when the infant is feeling some form of discomfort. Babies start to use different types of cries
for different needs which help parents or caregivers meet those specific needs. Newborns often
also cry at the sound of another crying infant which shows a capacity to react to the suffering of
others. The cry of a baby stimulates strong feelings of arousal and discomfort in adults, parents
and non-parents alike. This powerful response is probably innately programmed to help ensure
that babies receive the care and protection they need to survive.
Newborn babies are also able to recognise their mother's’ voice. Research with severely
preterm babies’ show that this capability is present while the baby is still in the womb. Severely
premature babies tend to such more quickly on their feeding nipple when they hear their
mother's’ voice and tend to suck more slowly when hearing the voice of an unfamiliar person. At
around 3 months of age, babies show recognition of familiar people or objects. This is when
babies start to smile at their parents and respond to their attention, leading to the strengthening
of social bonds.
Babies come into the world with built-in learning capacities that permit them to profit from
experience immediately. Learning refers to changes in behaviour as the result of experience.
They learn through classical and operant conditioning and also through their natural preference
for novel stimulation. Shortly after birth, babies learn by observing others; they can imitate the
facial expressions and gestures of adults.
At birth, the human brain is setup to be attracted to novelty. Infants tend to respond more
strongly to a new element that has entered their environment, an inclination that ensures that
they will continually add to their knowledge base. Once an infant has repeatedly been exposed
to the new stimulus, habituation sets in. This shows that the baby is now bored and has lost
interest. With age, infants habituate and recover more quickly. Novelty preference assesses
infants’ recent memory, whereas familiarity preference assesses remote memory. Habituation
research shows that young infants are especially attracted to motion and remember the
movement of objects and people for weeks to months. Habituation and recovery are effective
early predictors of intelligence because they assess memory and quickness and flexibility of
thinking.
The sense of touch, taste, smell and hearing are also well-developed at birth. Newborns’ orient
towards the odour of their own mother's’ amniotic fluid and that of the lactating breast –
responses that help them identify their caregiver and locate an appropriate food source. Infants
also prefer the sound of their mother's’ voice and the sounds of their native language.
Answer:
Stimulation of the brain is vital when it is growing most rapidly. Animal and human studies reveal
that early, extreme sensory deprivation results in permanent brain damage and loss of
functions. These findings verify the existence of sensitive periods in brain development.
Research on children adopted from Romanian orphanages indicate that depraved institutional
care extending beyond the first 6 months results in persistent intellectual impairments and
mental health problems.
Much evidence confirms that the brain is particularly sponge like during the first few years,
enabling children to acquire new skills easily and quickly. Researchers have distinguished
between two types of brain development: experience-expectant brain growth, and
experience-dependent brain growth.
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Jacqui Stoneley
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