PSY 2105 Lecture Notes - Generation Gap, Mary Ainsworth, Naturalistic Observation

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 2105
• Professor: Alastair Younger

Document Summary

Greatest amount of development occurs in adolescents. 1st category of descriptive methods is observation. 2nd category of descriptive methods is naturalistic observation (observing children in their natural habitat such as at home, school, daycare or in a shopping mall) How do shy kids get treated by their peers? (naturalistic observation) Disadvantages: - researchers can influence the recording & observations by their own knowledge/stereotypes. Also observer bias (expectations of the observer) Get a 2nd opinion & if they have an agreement of information then its reliable: time sampling- ensures that participants look at a child at the same period of time. Mary ainsworth- child psychologist who studied the mother & child phenomenon such as how children react when mom leaves the room so she conducted a strange situation which she modified for her study. Strange situation is a structured observational procedure. Disadvantages: lying (children don"t want to be seen under the naughty spotlight) Direction of relationship (+ or - )