psychology

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PSYC 333 Unit Assessments: Unit 2 Case Study Assignment

Spring 2020 (updated April 1, 2020)

Goals

I created this assignment so that students will have opportunities to:

· integrate and apply research on different domains of development into a “whole child”

· analyze how the case illustrates various themes or principles in developmental science.

General Instructions

This is your major Unit 2 assignment, due on Thursday April 9 by 11:59PM. See last page of this doc for a rubric that summarizes our expectations on this assignment.

Steps for completing the assignment are as follows:

1. First, review the prompts, and the rubric/grading criteria for the assignment (also posted in blackboard), so that you know what is expected.

2. Create a document with your name and your team number on it.

3. Respond to the prompts below in your document.

4. Submit your assignment by 11:59 PM Thursday April 9, through the link under Unit 2 on our course Blackboard site, where it will be automatically scanned for plagiarism using SafeAssign, and then graded by your GTA.

5. You are welcome (and encouraged) to discuss the assignment with your peers, but each of you much turn in a unique case, resolution, explanations, etc...

Assignment Prompts

1. Case/Vignette (20%). Your starting point for your vignette is the child you introduced in your Unit 1 Case Study Assignment. There should be continuity between the child you describe here and your Unit 1 vignette. Provide some very brief reminders of the scenario in that first vignette (the majority of your vignette should be new material). If there is a big shift in the child’s functioning (e.g., a premature infant who started off really behind but has now caught up and is progressing in a typical fashion), then be sure to include an explanation for that (e.g., participation in an intervention, a change in life circumstances, etc…). You do not necessarily need to start this second case chronologically where your previous case left off- your goal is to write about a different aspect of the same child’s functioning.

Specifically, focus your vignette on aspects of your child’s development related to Unit 2 of the course (i.e., models of cognitive development, learning, language development, the development of intelligence, and academic skills). Thus, your story should depict aspects of your child’s growing understanding of the world, changing information processing abilities/skills (e.g., working memory, inhibition, strategies) and how they play out in everyday situations, developing ability to communicate with others, and/or intellectual and academic development. Your case should accurately reflect the research in Unit 2 and should be 1-2 pages single-spaced. Be sure that your case illustrates the themes you will be asked to analyze in prompt 2.

2. Case Analysis (30%). Next, “analyze” your case, based on what you have learned from the relevant course material. In other words, explain why your child’s development went in the direction(s) described in the case. Whereas your Case should focus on what happened, this part should focus on explaining why those things happened, according to the course material. Focus your explanation on the following themes:

a) The role of uniquely human capabilities (“the human spark”) in other aspects of the child’s cognitive/language/intellectual development

b) How your child’s changing information processing abilities/skills (e.g., working memory, inhibition, strategies, knowledge) are contributing to his/her/their behavior

c) Sociocultural models of development- the ways in which social interaction can be a driver/mechanism of cognitive development (and/or how this is culturally driven or reflects culture)

Be sure to clearly identify these issues in your analysis, so that there is no ambiguity about what you are explaining.

Each of the following prompts could be addressed in about a paragraph, but feel free to use bullets to structure your responses to different parts of each prompt.

3. Piaget’s Theory (10%). Imagine you want to know whether Piaget’s compelling descriptions of children’s thinking hold true with the child in your vignette. Describe a traditional Piagetian task and how you could use it to address this question. Specifically, what type of performance on the task would you expect to see at your child’s age (according to Piaget)? How would Piaget explain what the child’s performance on the task reveals (i.e., what understandings/ skills are or are not being displayed on the task according to Piaget). What is an alternative (“non-Piagetian”) explanation?

4. The Active Role of the Child (10%) in shaping cognitive development. Review the text (pages 337-338) on evocative and active genotype-environment interactions and apply to your child’s intellectual and language development. Specifically, describe one way in which evocative genotype–environment interactions may have led the child in your case to “acquire” experiences that influence language or intellectual development (either positively or negatively). Similarly, describe a way in which active genotype-environment interactions may have led your child to acquire experiences that affect language or intellectual development. For both, support your points with empirical evidence (research).

5. Language Development (10%). Your text describes the many perceptual and learning capabilities, cognitive biases, and social interactions that drive different aspects of language development (e.g., phonology, semantics, syntax or pragmatics) in human children. Choose two different types of language achievements (e.g., word segmentation, acquiring a new word’s meaning, learning a grammatical morpheme, etc…) for your hypothetical child. For each one, describe a specific scenario in your child’s life that, according to research, could have supported that language achievement. Be specific about the perceptual or learning capability, cognitive biases, or social interactions or cues involved in each scenario, and the empirical evidence behind your idea.

Here’s an example (so for your own, choose something other than use of grammatical cues): Learning the word “coffee.” Three-year-old Ricky watches as a new machine (a coffee maker) on the kitchen counter makes a bunch of sounds (brewing) and out pours hot, dark liquid (coffee). Ricky’s father walks over and says jokingly, oh are you interested in some coffee? Ricky immediately knows his father is referring to the hot liquid, not the coffee machine or the brewing process. Ricky is using cues in the linguistic context to infer the meaning of the word. Research by Brown (1957) showed that children can use the grammatical form of a word (in this case, the use of “some”) as one type of linguistic context that helps them infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word.

6. Intelligence and Academic Skills (10%). One major insight from developmental science is that the same event/experience can affect different children quite differently. Describe two ways in which our current situation with the coronavirus might affect the intellectual and academic skill development of the child in your vignette. In other words, how might aspects of this event we are all experiencing (school closures, having to stay at home, social isolation- refer back to the week 9 ELA) interact with your particular child’s characteristics and developmental context to influence their intellectual and/or academic development (for better or for worse)? Support your points (about how these conditions might affect intellectual/academic development) with empirical evidence (research findings).

7. Research Interpretation and Application (10%). A recent study by Ulset et al. (2017) found looked at how time spent outdoors is linked to children’s cognitive and attentional development. They were interested in testing the general hypothesis that the outdoor environment promotes health and prevents mental and somatic problems. Review the findings of the Ulset et al (2017) study described on the next page. What are the major results/ take-aways from the study? What are some potential criticisms? Assuming these results are accurate, how do they relate to the issues you discussed under prompt 6 above, and why?

Ulset, V., Vitaro, F., Brendgen, M., Bekkhus, M., & Borge, A. (2017). Time spent outdoors during preschool: Links with children's cognitive and behavioral development. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 52, 69-80.

This study examined how the amount of children spend outdoors during preschool relates to their cognitive and behavior development during preschool and first grade. The authors suggested that outdoor time may allow children to restore attentional resources that have been depleted by noise and other distractions. The participants were 562 Norwegian preschoolers (298 girls; mean age at first assessment 52.45 months). The children were followed over four years. Managers of the daycares provided information about the number of hours children spent outdoors. Children's attention skills were tested directly with a digit span test (measuring executive function/attention and short-term memory) each year of the study, and teachers rated their behavior (attention and hyperactivity) each year as well. The analyses controlled for possible confounds, such as parent socioeconomic status, preschool quality, and parent mental health.

Digit Span Scores over time, for children at preschools with high and low outdoor time.

Child digit span: This figure shows changes in digit span performance over time, for children with high levels of outdoor time (dotted line) and those with lower levels (solid line). The two curves/lines are significantly different, beginning at age 4 years.

Teacher-rated inattention and hyperactivity scores, for children at preschools with high and low amounts of outdoor time.

Child attention and hyperactivity: This graph shows how inattention and hyperactivity changed with age, for children who had high amounts of outdoor time (the dotted line) versus for children with lower amounts of outdoor time (the solid line). The two lines are significantly different after age 3 years.