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Research Article Exploration Essay
The research article chosen was designed to measure how 13- and 17- months infants
start to judge fairness in social decision-making. They were exposed to two different visual
stimuli from a pre-recorded activity, demonstrating crackers' fair and unfair distribution. The fair
video presented the cracker distributor equally dividing six crackers between two subjects. In the
unfair video, a different distributor gave the first subject a single cracker and the second subject
five crackers. Each group viewed the recording of fair and unfair distribution twice. To test if the
differing video molded a response in their social decision-making. The distributors then dropped
a bright green frog down a tube into a box in the room. To ensure the infants understood the
game, they presented the toy from the box and then reshown the video. The results in the live
practice revealed that 13-month infants went to a box showing the fair distributor dropping the
bright green toy 78.57% of the time. The results increased considerably in the 17-months infants
to 93.75% (Lucca et al., 2018).
It was my first exposure to researching how fairness informs social making in infancy. I
was unaware that viewing a videoed experiment could formulate an impressionable response at
that age. This study on human development establishes a connection between early examples of
fair and unfair social decision-making. The findings demonstrated that this time frame is a
critical period in developing infants (Lucca et al., 2018). The infants came from white college-
educated parents. They did not explore how other cultural or ethnic different distributors would
affect the results or different demographics of parents and educational backgrounds could have
affected their findings.
At first, I had difficulty correlating how we were to use Adobe Reader with this
assignment. I completed the required task but still lacked the confidence to utilize this tool
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regularly. The video explanation immensely aided in navigating this new software. I have used
research articles from scholarly sources in the past. The highlighting component in Adobe
Reader I found helpful in dissecting the multitude of information. The ten identifying markers
allow the user to categorize strategic elements needed. It made completing the exploration essay
easier to compose. A definition or example of a limitation or strength would have been
beneficial.
