Evaluate the research questions and hypotheses using the Research Questions and Hypotheses Checklist as a guide · Identify the type of quantitative research design used and explain how the researchers implemented the design

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Resources for this week please apply to answer

Babbie, E. (2017). Basics of social research (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

· Chapter 5, “Conceptualization, Operationalization, and Measurement”

Burkholder, G. J., Cox, K. A., & Crawford, L. M. (2016). The scholar-practitioner’s guide to research design. Baltimore, MD: Laureate Publishing.

· Chapter 4, “Quantitative Research Designs”

·

Research Questions and Hypotheses Checklist

Use the following criteria to evaluate an author’s research questions and/or hypotheses.

Look for indications of the following:

• Is the research question(s) a logical extension of the purpose of the study?

• Does the research question(s) reflect the best question to address the problem?

• Does the research question(s) align with the design of the study?

• Does the research question(s) align with the method identified for collecting data?

If the study is qualitative, does the research question(s) do as follows?

• Relate the central question to the qualitative approach

• Begin with What or How (not Why)

• Focus on a single phenomenon

• Use exploratory verbs

• Use nondirectional language

• Use an open-ended format

• Specify the participants and research site If the study is quantitative:

• Do the descriptive questions seek to describe responses to major variables?

• Do the inferential questions seek to compare groups or relate variables?

• Do the inferential questions follow from a theory?

• Are the variables positioned consistently from independent/predictor to dependent/outcome in the inferential questions?

• Is a null and/or alternative hypothesis provided as a predictive statement?

• Is the hypothesis consistent with its respective research question?

• Does the question(s) and/or hypothesis specify the participants and research site? If the study is mixed methods, do the research questions and/or hypotheses do the following?

• Include the characteristics of a good qualitative research question (as listed above)

• Include the characteristics of a good quantitative research and/or hypothesis (as listed above)

• Indicate how the researcher will mix or integrate the two approaches of the study

• Specify the participants and research site

• Convey the overall intent of the study that calls for a mixed methods approach

Discussion: Evaluating Research Questions, Hypotheses, and Quantitative Research Designs

With a clear purpose in place, quantitative researchers have a roadmap for crafting their research questions and hypotheses that will further focus the approach they will take to investigate their topic (i.e., their study’s research design).

The selection of a research design is guided by the study’s purpose and research questions and hypotheses, and the design then links the research questions and hypotheses to the data that will be collected. You should keep in mind, however, that the research process is interactive, not necessarily proceeding in a linear fashion from one component to the next. Rather, the writing of research questions could, for example, necessitate adjustments to the study’s purpose statement. Nevertheless, when presented together, the various components of a research study should align. As you learned last week, alignment means that a research study possesses clear and logical connections among all of its various components.

In addition to considering alignment, when researchers select a research design, they must also consider the ethical implications of their choice, including, for example, what their design selection means for participant recruitment, procedures, and privacy.

For this Discussion, you will evaluate quantitative research questions and hypotheses in assigned journal articles in your discipline and consider the alignment of theory, problem, purpose, research questions and hypotheses, and design. You will also identify the type of quantitative research design the authors used and explain how it was implemented. You will also complete online training in the protection of human research participants.

With these thoughts in mind, refer to the Journal Articles document for your assigned articles for this Discussion. If your last name starts with A through I, use Article A. If your last name starts with J through R, use Article B. If your last name starts with S through Z, use Article C.

By Day 4

Post a critique of the research study in which you:

· Evaluate the research questions and hypotheses using the Research Questions and Hypotheses Checklist as a guide

· Identify the type of quantitative research design used and explain how the researchers implemented the design

· Analyze alignment among the theory, problem, purpose, research questions and hypotheses, and design

Be sure to support your Main Issue Post and Response Post with reference to the week’s Learning Resources and other scholarly evidence in APA Style.

This article is part of discussion please read and apply to answer

Ivcevic, Z., & Brackett, M. A. (2015). Predicting creativity: Interactive effects of openness to experience and emotion regulation ability. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 9(4), 480–487. doi:10.1037/a0039826

What are the most important things a parent should be looking for when deciding placement in a     preschool?

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When evaluating a preschool one of the things some parents will look at is academics that are taught to their child.

1- What are the most important things a parent should be looking for when deciding placement in a

preschool?

2-  How do parents evaluate skill development with regards to problem solving, make-believe and artistic activities within

a preschool?  Explain why these factors may be important for this evaluation?

 

Criteria/ 300 Level   Forum Rubric

Possible Points

Student Points

 

Initial post

 

Analyzed the   question(s), fact(s), issue(s), etc. and provided well-reasoned and   substantive answers.

20

 

Supported ideas and   responses using appropriate examples and references from texts, professional   and/or academic websites, and other references.  (All references must be   from professional and/or academic sources. Websites such as Wikipedia,   about.com, and others such as these are NOT acceptable.)

20

 

Post meets the 300   word minimum requirement and is free from spelling/grammar errors

10

 

Timeliness:    initial post meets the Wed deadline

10

CHFD 308 | WEEK 7
Cognitive Development in Early Childhood

In this lesson, you will learn about four main ideas that revolve around cognitive development in early childhood. In general, early childhood is roughly between the ages of two and seven years old. Children go through great amounts of change during this time of their life, especially in the realm of cognitive development and advancement.

TOPICS TO BE COVERED INCLUDE:

· The advances in mental representation during the preschool years, including changes in make-believe play

· The advances in attention, memory, and problem-solving during childhood

· The development of vocabulary, grammar, and conversational skills in early childhood

· The factors that support language learning in early childhood

Advances in Mental Representation

Make-believe play has spurred enormous amounts of research, especially made by psychologist and developmental biologist Jean Piaget. Jean Piaget believed that sensorimotor activity is truly what leads to internal images of experience. In other words, he believed that significant advances are made in mental representation as children move from sensorimotor thought to preoperational thoughts.

MENTAL REPRESENTATION

REPRESENTATIONAL SCHEMES

SOCIO-DRAMATIC PLAY

MAKE-BELIEVE PLAY CONTRIBUTES TO DEVELOPMENT

LANGUAGE ROLE IN COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

How Make-Believe Develops

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· As a result of conducted research it is observed that make-believe play develops in stages. There are three important changes that reflect the preschool child’s growing symbolic mastery.

Benefits of Make-Believe Play

· BENEFIT OF MAKE-BELIEVE PLAY

· SOCIODRAMATIC PLAY

· IMPROVEMENTS IN COGNITIVE CAPACITY

· METACOGNITION

Undoubtedly, children benefit when they participate in make-believe play. Not only does make-believe play reflect the way children are thinking and cognitively developing, but it also contributes to or has an effect on children’s cognitive and social skills.

Information Processing

Over the course of early childhood, brains mature and more real-world experiences happen on a daily basis. As a result of that, advances in information processing, such as attention, memory, and problem solving, start taking place. These happenings allow children to become more efficient thinkers and grow metacognitively. It is through these practices that children begin to process information.

Information processing is a term for the cognitive operations and mental strategies that children use to make connections with and transform events and experiences into their mental systems. The various components of executive function that enable children to succeed in cognitively challenging situations – attention, impulse control, working memory, and planning – show impressive gains, leading to more efficient and flexible ways of manipulating information and solving problems, at this stage.

Facets of information Processing: Attention and Memory

Most of us have had conversations about “attention span.” Some people have greater attention spans than others, where they can hold their focus on something for a longer period of time. It is important to note that children’s attention is developed as their information processing develops.

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· Attention is selecting certain events or objects to focus on long enough to gain needed information without being distracted.

Recognition, Recall, and Episodic Memory

· Recognition

· Recall

· Episodic

Memory can also be broken into several other categories: recognition, recall, and episodic.

RECOGNITION

RECALL

EPISODIC

Problem Solving

Problem-solving is the mental process of recognizing, discovering, defining, identifying alternative plans to resolve, choosing a plan, organizing steps, implementing steps, and evaluating the outcome.

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· Problem-solving is a type of information processing. The act of planning shows improvement during early childhood. The child’s ability to think ahead about a sequence of acts or a series of steps is complex thinking. Children this age are especially successful at completing this task if the task is simple and familiar, which is related to their working memory.

Metacognition, Theory of the Mind

· DEFINITION OF METACOGNITION

· METACOGNITION AT AGES 1 AND 2

· METACOGNITION AT AGE 3

· METACOGNITION AT AGE 4

Metacognition is reflection on one’s own thought processes; the “theory of mind.” As mental representation and problem-solving improve, children begin to reflect on thought processes. In other words, they begin to construct a ‘theory of mind: a coherent set of ideas about mental activities. As with many other areas of thinking related to the brain, in this case, the left-prefrontal cortex is utilized.

Speech and Language Development

The first three years of a child’s life are essential when it comes to speech and language development. It is during these years that children journey through vocabulary building, grammar rules, and become conversational beings. This intense period of language acquisition is essential for children so they can continue to develop such skills.

EARLY LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

COMMUNICATION RELATED TO COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

INFANTS’ SPEECH RECOGNITION

COMPONENTS OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the body of words known to someone. It builds slowly, then rapidly turns into babbling, then becomes more meaningful speech. The timeline below describes the growth of the average child’s vocabulary.

INFANCY

TODDLER

PRESCHOOLER

FAST MAPPING

FIRST NOUNS, THEN VERBS

BOOTSTRAPPING

Grammar

Grammar is how words are combined into meaningful phrases and sentences.

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· At age two, children begin speaking in simple sentences and follow the subject-verb order for English speaking children. Children that communicate in other languages use the word order pattern that they hear.

Conversation

Conversation is when there is engagement in effective and appropriate communication. When participating in a conversation, children need to understand that when talking, it is important to take turns. They also need to know that conversations need to stay on a topic. They need to state the message clearly if they want to convey information. And further, children must conform to their culture’s language rules, called pragmatics.

 

Age

Milestone

 

Birth to 3 months

Attend to speaker’s   mouth or eyes; move in response to voice; express feelings by cooing,   gurgling, crying; tries to imitate sounds.

 

4 to 6 months

Exchange facial   expressions (like smiling), vocalize to objects; laugh; babble to gain   attention; show pleasure by vocalizing; listen to others’ conversations.

 

7 to 9 months

Continue making and   repeating babbling sounds, start adding gestures to noises being made.

 

9 to 12 months

Use body language and   facial expression to convey feelings.

 

12 to 24 months

Carry on conversations   with toys, self, and others.

 

By 2 years

Skilled conversationalist;   taking turns talking; can respond and ask questions.

 

By 3 years

Sustains interaction   over several turns in a conversation; maintains topic of conversation.

 

By 4 years

Adapt to social   expectations; adapt to stereotypical expectations; for example: more dominant   when playing male roles, more polite when playing female roles.

Language Learning Support

· THE INFLUENCE OF SIBLINGS

· RICH ADULT CONVERSATION BENEFITS LANGUAGE SKILLS

· CONVERSATIONS

· CORRECTING ERRORS

If a child has siblings, then that child is immersed in conversation between siblings and parents and may try to join in on conversations. Having siblings is related to pragmatics.

Children monitor conversations between siblings and parents and may even try to join in the conversation. When the child who is developing their language skills does get to interact in the conversation, the conversations last longer and more turns are taken during talking.

Correcting Inaccuracies

Two strategies are effective and lead to long-lasting improvements to help correct children’s incorrect speech: recasts and expansions.

RECASTS

EXPANSIONS

ASSISTING LOW SES CHILDREN

TECHNOLOGY NOT PREFERRED

CHILDCARE

Literacy

Literacy is the ability to read and write, which is highly intertwined with language skills development. The path to literacy competency begins at birth. This can be done through book-sharing, reading together, telling stories, singing songs, and conversations. Early learners need a strong foundation in oral language; they need to both hear and speak with others. Children need to be immersed in language practices and reading. Children should also understand that print is a tool for sharing meaning and is another way to communicate. This is called “print awareness.” Children become aware of the print-rich environment when they see adults reading and writing.

Knowledge Check

1

Question 1

One of these is not an outcome of make-believe play. Which one is it?

 

Language   and literacy skills are enhanced.

 

Children   tend to be more scared.

 

Social   skills are enhanced.

I don’t know

One attempt

Submit answer

You answered 0 out of 0 correctly. Asking up to 2.

Lesson Overview

In order for children’s language skill, development, and acquisition to grow, they must be exposed to opportunities to communicate with themselves, other children, and adults that use rich vocabulary. Based on research, there are several different stages (ages) at which we can expect children to start participating in make-believe play; start understanding metacognition; start communicating with others, both real and make-believe, both alive and imaginary, objects, etc.; and start understanding grammar. Exposure to these practices will improve language skills and practices.

Key Terms:

MENTAL REPRESENTATION

METACOGNITION

INFORMATION PROCESSING

ATTENTION

MEMORY

WORKING MEMORY

LONG-TERM MEMORY

IMPLICIT (NON-DECLARATIVE)

EXPLICIT (DECLARATIVE)

RECOGNITION

RECALL

EPISODIC

PROBLEM SOLVING

METACOGNITION (THEORY OF MIND)

MENTAL REPRESENTATION

VOCABULARY

GRAMMAR

CONVERSATION

LITERACY

Works Cited:

· (2010, September 24). Early childhood: physical and cognitive development. Retrieved from http://psychology.illinoisstate.edu/aehouse/213/units/7_early_childhood.htm

· Overlapping Waves – Robert Siegler et al. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://quizlet.com/47019858/overlapping-waves-robert-siegler-et-al-flash-cards/

Discuss the concept of Type A behavior pattern, its history, and what we now know concerning  its role in heart disease.

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Instructions: Answer the following questions thoroughly in paragraph format (complete sentences).

  1. The text discusses in detail language development among children. How could grammatical errors actually be indicative of language acquisition in children?

2.Define the term heuristic. How does the availability heuristic lead people to believe that catastrophic events, such as plane crashes, occur more frequently than they actually do?

3. Alfred Binet’s insight regarding a method of measuring mental development had an international  impact in the twentieth century. Explain how Binet’s went about calculating a child’s mental abilities. What scoring system did later researchers base on Binet’s method, and how was it originally calculated?

4. Compare and contrast the benefits of the Stanford-Binet IQ test and Wechsler’s IQ tests.

5. What are the cultural implications of IQ test? What is event schemata? Explain why event schemata have so much power over human behavior.

6. What is functional fixedness and how can overcoming it help you solve problems? Similarly, how does an algorithm save you time and energy when solving a problem?

7. Describe the relationship between learning disabilities and intellectual disabilities to intelligence.

LEARNING: CHAPTER 6 ASSIGNMENT (20 points) 

(10 points) Instructions: Develop a “Key Terms” for the following Assignment by defining these terms:

  • classical conditioning
  • operant conditioning
  • observational learning
  • positive reinforcement
  • negative reinforcement
  • punishment
  • neutral stimulus
  • unconditional stimulus
  • unconditional response
  • conditioned stimulus
  • conditioned response

(5 points) Instructions: For each situation below, indicate whether it is an example of :

a.  classical conditioning

b.  operant conditioning

c.  observational learning

1. Susie is a four-year-old child. One day she watches her mother vacuum the living room. Her mother comments to Susie, “Doesn’t the living room look nice now that I’ve cleaned it?” The next day, her mother finds Susie “vacuuming” the living room with her toy vacuum.

  Answer: 

2. You are thinking of asking the teacher for an extension on your paper. Just as you are about to go up to the teacher, another student approaches the teacher with the same request. The teacher appears angry, and very loudly and rudely turns down the student’s request for an extension. You decide not to ask for an extension.

Answer: 

3. Until she was eight, Barbara liked cats. When she was eight, she was bitten through the hand by a cat as she tried to get it out from under a bed. This was an upsetting experience. Since that time, Barbara experiences anxiety whenever she is near a cat.

Answer:

4. Alison, age four, needs to learn to speak up louder in class. Her parents and teacher agree that whenever Alison speaks up loudly in class, she will get a star on her chart. Whenever she accumulates 25 stars, she will get to go to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream. Alison starts speaking up in class more frequently.

   Answer: 

5. Tom is hammering nails into planks to build a fence. He experiments with holding the nail a different way and immediately hits his thumb with the hammer. OUCH!  He continues his work, but he never holds the nail that way again.

  Answer: 

6. It is summer. Sarah and Jeremy are in love. They enjoy being together and are thoroughly relaxed and content in each other’s presence. The hit song that summer is “Buckets of Love” and they hear that song a lot when they are together. At the end of the summer, they have to return to their separate colleges, which are quite far apart. That fall, every time Sarah hears the tune “Buckets of Love,” she experiences the same feelings of relaxation and contentment that she felt when she was with Jeremy.

(5 points)  Instructions: In the following examples, identify which element is being used to control behavior:

a.  positive reinforcement

b.  negative reinforcement

c.  punishment

. The smoke detector in Jesse’s house is low on batteries. It emits an annoying chirp every few seconds. Jesse installs a new battery so it will stop making that noise.

  Answer: 

9. Dr. Smith, a Doe College instructor, is having difficulty getting students to turn in papers. Previously, he had not assigned credit for homework; rather, he had simply assumed that students would do it for the practice. Dr. Smith establishes a policy that all students who turn in papers will get full credit for their work. Students now turn in papers much more often.

  Answer: 

10.  Jeff is playing with his food at the dinner table. His mother tells him to stop playing with his food. When he does not stop, she takes his food away, leaving Jeff hungry all night. Jeff never plays with his food again.

  Answer: 

11.  Jeff is playing with his food at the dinner table while his parents are trying to carry on an adult conversation. When his mother notices what Jeff is doing, she stops talking with her husband and directs her attention to Jeff. She yells at him to stop playing with his food, and says that playing with his food is a horrible and disgusting habit. Jeff plays with his food again several times during that meal, and even more frequently the next night.

  Answer: 

12.  Jeff is diligently working on an art project at school. His teacher notices how nicely he is working and praises him loudly for his efforts. Jeff immediately seems less interested working on his project. The teacher praises the little bits he completes as time goes on, and Jeff stops working on the art project entirely.

  Answer: 

STRESS, LIFESTYLE, & HEALTH: CHAPTER 14 ASSIGNMENT (20 points)

Instructions: Answer the following questions thoroughly in paragraph format (complete sentences).

  1. Provide an example of a stressful situation that may cause a person to become seriously ill. How

would Selye’s general adaptation syndrome explain this occurrence?

  1. Review the items on the Social Readjustment Rating Scale. Select one of the items and discuss

how it might bring about distress and eustress.

  1. Job burnout tends to be high in people who work in human service jobs. Considering the three

dimensions of job burnout, explain how various job aspects unique to being a police officer might

lead to job burnout in that line of work.

  1. Discuss the concept of Type A behavior pattern, its history, and what we now know concerning

its role in heart disease.

  1. Consider the study in which volunteers were given nasal drops containing the cold virus to

examine the relationship between stress and immune function (Cohen et al., 1998). How might this

finding explain how people seem to become sick during stressful times in their lives (e.g., final exam

week)?

  1. Although problem-focused coping seems to be a more effective strategy when dealing with

stressors, do you think there are any kinds of stressful situations in which emotion focused coping

might be a better strategy?

  1. Describe how social support can affect health both directly and indirectly.

Which ones are greater than + 1.0? What does having a skewness or kurtosis value that is greater than + 1.0 tell you about normality?

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PSY 870: Module 3 Problem Set GAF, Consumer Satisfaction, and Type of Clinical Agency (Public or Private) A researcher wants to know if mental health clients of private versus public service agencies differ on Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scores and on Satisfaction with Services (Satisfaction). She has collected data for 34 clients from a private agency and for 47 clients of a public agency. Directions: Use the SPSS data file for Module 3 (located in Topic Materials) to answer the following questions: 1. What is the independent variable in this study? What are the dependent variables? 2. The first step for the researcher will be to clean and screen the data. Please do this for the researcher and report your findings. Be sure to check it for possible coding errors, as well as complete the screening of the data to see if the data meet assumptions for parametric tests. Did you find any errors that the researcher made when setting up the SPSS data file (check the variable view)? If so, what did you find? How did you correct it? HINT: Yes, one of the variables is incorrectly listed as scale. 3. Were there missing values on any of the variables? If so, what might you do for those for the independent variable? What about those for each of the dependent variables? Explain your reasoning. HINTS: • Yes, each variable has some missing data. Describe how many (and % of all) are missing on each variable. • When considering what to do about the missing values on each variable, consider if you really can guess what agency a person came from. Next, for the continuous variables, consider (1) what % of values are missing (if more than 5% are missing, what might this mean?); (2) is there a pattern to the missing scores? Include information from the Output file of your SPSS Explore analyses to provide specific number and % of missing values on each of the dependent variables. Based on this, what recommendation would you make for what to do about the missing values? 4. Did you find any outliers on the dependent variables that were due to errors of coding? If so, what and why? How would you correct an error of coding?3 HINT: One of the outliers on one continuous variable clearly is a coding error. Which one is that? What would be the best way to handle that outlier? 5. How might you deal with outliers that are not due to coding errors? Explain your reasoning. HINT: Use the information you have from your Output file from your Explore analyses to describe the outliers (e.g. how many outliers are there on each continuous variable; do they fall above and/or below the mean). What are ways to handle outliers on the continuous variables? Might there be some arguments against deleting outliers? What are these? 6. Check the descriptive statistics, histograms, stem-and-leaf plots, and the tests for normality that you obtained from your analyses (see box to check in “Plots” when using Explore to analyze descriptive statistics of your data). Considering the skewness and kurtosis values, as well as the Shapiro-Wilk’s results (preferred for small sample sizes), did the distribution of scores on either of the dependent variables violate the assumption of normality? How can you tell from the information you obtained from your analyses? HINTS: • First, you can look at your histograms and stem-and-leaf plots to see if you observe marked skewness or other indicators of differences between the distribution of scores from the normal distribution. • Next, you can inspect the computed values for skewness and kurtosis for your variables from your analyses. Report these values in your answer for the continuous dependent variables? Which ones are greater than + 1.0? What does having a skewness or kurtosis value that is greater than + 1.0 tell you about normality? Then, discuss what having these kinds of values tell you about the normality of the distribution of scores on that variable. • Next, look at the Shapiro-Wilks’ tests of normality that you ran. Results with p < .001 or less indicate a violation of the normality assumption using this type of evaluation. Solution: The below is the frequency of categorical variables: There is only one continuous variable and descriptive statistics, histograms, stem-and-leaf plots, and the tests for normality are given below: GAF Stem-and-Leaf Plot Frequency Stem & Leaf 1.00 Extremes (=<16) 3.00 3 . 123 6.00 3 . 999999 11.00 4 . 13344444444 14.00 4 . 56666666667999 16.00 5 . 1111133333444444 5.00 5 . 55555 .00 6 . 4.00 6 . 9999 1.00 7 . 1 12.00 Extremes (>=76) Stem width: 10 Each leaf: 1 case(s) From the above analysis, we can see that mean is 54.58 and standard deviation 21.899. The standard deviation is very high in this case. Skewness value is 4.257 which is bigger than 0, it means that data is positively skewed, most values are concentrated on left of the mean, with extreme values to the right. Kurtosis value is 27.455 which is bigger than 3, it means that the distribution is Leptokurtic, sharper than a normal distribution, with values concentrated around the mean and thicker tails. This means high probability for extreme values. We can see from the plot of Histogram that the data is not normal and there are some extreme high values and extreme low value in the data. The same can be easily seen from the stem and leaf plot and also from the box and whisker plot. The normal probability plot shows that the all values are not on a straight line, it means that the data departs from normality. The same conclusion can be drawn from Shapiro-Wilk’s test with p-value 0.0000 depicts that the data is not normal. We can conclude that the distribution of scores on dependent variable violate the assumption of normality. 7. If in #6, you identified any distributions that violate the assumption of normality, what are some options you might use to try to correct the distribution to get closer to normality? (You do not need to do these steps. Just describe them.) 8. Write a sample result section, discussing your data screening activity.