Chapter 3 Exercise 1: What are your research goals for the week? What are your research goals for today? How will you achieve these goals? (Of course, you can use extra pages from your research notebook.) What will you do if you are unable to achieve those goals? What is your backup plan for alternative goals or activities?
- My research team and I are focusing on the usage of blocks, puzzles, and legos in early childhood and its impact on the child’s STEM abilities later on in life. Because there is extensive research on children and usage of toys, my goal for today is to find research articles that specifically pertain to puzzle toys that require solving and brain-power, and their impacts on development. My goal for the week is to then connect the impacts of toys that require solving to later personal advancements in STEM subjects. If I am unable to achieve these goals, I will go back to researching the benefits of puzzle solving for early childhood development. Once I can distinguish a benefit, I will focus on that connection for future research.
Chapter 3 Exercise 2: Can you think of any guidelines to implement that would better organize your laboratory or team? How might these help new members of your laboratory or the team that you are involved in? List your ideas below, and develop a strategic plan. In this plan, how will you get from point A to B? What are the mechanisms that you will use?
- Clear and concise guidelines and rules are essential for a laboratory setting. To prevent misunderstandings, online scheduling for tasks and shifts are helpful. When scheduling takes place in a way that everyone can see and discuss, there is a stronger demand for personal responsibility when someone does that follow through with their assigned task. Signing in and out of the lab is a great way to document what takes place in the lab, incase of mistakes or inconsistencies in data. This is another way to hold researchers personally accountable, thus creating a need for the researchers to work harder and avoid making careless mistakes. Because communication is key in group settings, an online (text or email) group chat is necessary. This allows each member to stay engaged and up to date with findings even when the researcher is not present in the laboratory. Lastly, creating deadlines within your laboratory will prevent procrastination or delays in findings. With these mechanisms in place, you can clearly communicate the research topic, as well as assign roles to meet deadlines.
Chapter 3 Exercise 3: Select a goal. It can be anything from being sure to call your mother, or to write five pages a day, to doing 20 push-ups each morning (see the example below; but select something different from these examples).
EX: I will begin by doing three push-ups each morning before 7 A.M. As a re- ward, I will have a coffee after I do my pushups. Each day, I will try to increase the number of push-ups by one until I reach 20. I plan to achieve this goal by the end of November (in less than 1 month). If I do not reach this goal, I will not allow myself to buy ice cream for 60 days.
- My goal is to read more each day. If I do not read each day, I will not allow myself to watch television shows or movies. Instead of listening to music or browsing on instagram on my daily commute, I will use the time to read. Each chapter I read, will convert to one episode of a television series.
What are your research goals for the day? How will you achieve these goals?
- My research goals of the day are to find at least 10 articles that focus on children and their usage of blocks and if that is a predictor of academic or creative capabilities later on in life. I will go through each article and write a summary of their results and findings.
What are your research goals for the week? How will you achieve these goals?
- My research goal for the week is to find 30 research papers that apply to my research topic. Upon reading each paper, I will complete a quick summary of their results and take notes regarding how the research is applicable to our topic of puzzle/block/legos connection to STEM abilities.
What are your research goals for the month? How will you achieve these goals?
- Upon having all research papers that I will be referencing ready, I will begin writing my final paper. Each of my research team members and I will have clear dates set up to meet and write the paper together. We will each contribute our research findings to our final paper.
Chapter 3 Exercise 4: Take a look at 10 research laboratories from around the world. (There is space here for three labs. Use your research notebook for additional labs.) Spend 10 minutes apiece investigating how these various laboratories are organized. Everything from the way that participants are recruited to how the lab is organized might give you ideas about how to get your research done more effectively. What did you find? Some examples are listed below.
Golden Meadow Laboratory at the University of Chicago
Online schedule of lab meetings and events!
There is a list of prior lab members that even includes their email addresses!
There is a downloadable lab equipment checkout guide!
Infant Development Research Center at Florida International University
Student award page (great for building the culture of research!).
Related links page, including links to information on child care and parenting.
Conference presentations, with links to posters to download!
Laboratory for Developmental Studies at Harvard University
A wonderful, easy-to-find newsletter about the lab’s research.
A great video: “click here to watch a video of a typical infant study.” An easy-to-fill-out online form for recruitment.
Birkbeck Babylab at University College London
A sample of stimuli videos from various studies.
Great use of social media!
Great Facebook link (not to mention a very active Facebook page)! Nice logo! Adolescent Stress and Emotion Lab at Arizona State University
Great picture of the team.
- Lab Name: Development in School Contexts (DISCo) Lab at George Mason University
- Pros: The website has an easy way to find their past research in order by most recent. It also shows their past projects. The tabs on the side make it easy to find everything from contact information to different resources like a video on how to get an academic job.
- Lab Name: Communication and Learning Lab at the University of Chicago
- Pros: This website provides information on their research and their members as well as links on how to email any of them individually. Not only do they explain their research, they provide answers to questions parents might ask when thinking about letting their child participate in a research study. This is especially important because it gives the parents peace of mind.
- Lab Name: Cognitive Development Lab at The Chinese University of Hong Kong
- Pros: They provide their publications which help to establish the validity of the lab. They also provide a map on how to get to the Lab. There’s a form you can fill out to contact them.
- Lab Name: Developmental Research Center at UC Davis
- Pros: They provide a tab on participation where you can find information on how to participate in a study or work as an assistant in a study. They also provide directions on how to get to the lab from different parts.
- Lab Name: Rutgers Psychology Cognitive Development Laboratory
- Pros: They have separate tabs on how a graduate student can go about joining the lab as well as how an undergrad might be able to. Also, they have a tab where they explain exactly what they do in each study with the three age groups/groups.
- Lab Name: Language Acquisition and Development Research Laboratory at Barnard College of Columbia University
- Pros: They give public access to information on members of the lab. They provide an insight on their projects with visuals as well as publications a certain project made.
- Lab Name: Life-Span Development Laboratory at The University of Melbourne
- Pros: The website lists the theme this lab focuses on as well as well as themes the school focuses on. They also give an option on the bottom to contact them which makes things a lot easier.
- Lab Name: UCLA Baby Lab
- Pros: They give you a basic rundown of what a parent can expect for their child coming in for research which starts from the parking lot. They have an easy sign-up sheet to fill out for parents who are interested.
- Lab Name: Laboratory for Child Development at Johns Hopkins
- Pros: There’s multiple ways you see how to join their lab, which includes a tab on the top and an email being provided at the bottom to come in contact with them. They also provide a virtual tour of the lab.
- Lab Name: Child Development Research Center at Texas Tech University
- Pros: They provide videos on how programs at their center are. They also provide a pdf of what their research policies.
Chapter 3 Exercise 5: If you are involved in a laboratory, how do you plan to implement changes in the lab that you consider helpful? What is the timeline for these changes? Who is doing what and when? How might these changes best be achieved?
- Currently, none of us are involved in a laboratory and don’t plan to any time soon. If we were to be involved with a lab, it would be important for a lab to be able to keep up with the times. With technology advancing, the internet has become one of the easiest ways to find information. That means that having a updated website and social media page would help give exposure and make more people interested in their work.
Chapter 3 Exercise 6: If your lifestyle allows it, deliberately shut down all your access to social media, phone, etc., for 2 hours. What did you do during this time?
- After shutting off my phone and disconnecting from the world, I decided to read a book. I have many books but I never take the time to read them. After about a half an hour I started to clean my room. It was weird not cleaning with music but I did it. Then after that I had about 35 minutes left so I started to do homework that didn’t require the internet.
Chapter 3 Exercise 7: List in detail what you did for the past 30 minutes.
- For the past 30 minutes, I worked on my cultural psychology paper. All I needed was a pen, paper, the syllabus and the textbook. I got majority of it done because it was mainly focusing on my culture and my opinions.
Chapter 3 Exercise 8: Take 40 uninterrupted minutes to read a peer-reviewed paper or a paper assigned to you. Next, stand alone in a dark, quiet room with your eyes shut for 10 minutes (have someone time you). Answer each of the following questions in a single sentence.
Paper: Developmental Psychology: How Social Context Influences Infants’ Attention
What is the question the paper addressed?
- This study shows the changes in the focus of a social partner’s attention associate, on a second‐by‐second scale, with changes in how much attention infants pay to objects.
Why was this question important?
- Their seminal work emphasises the importance of embodied approaches to cognition.
What was new about the findings or the study?
- They came to the conclusion that the effect of social cues on an individual’s attention is mediated by other factors.
Discussion Question: How did spending 10 minutes with your eyes closed affect your ability to answer these questions?
- Spending 10 minutes with my eyes closed affected by ability to answer these questions because it cleared my mind. I wasn’t distracted by other things and was solely focusing on the article.
Chapter 11 Exercise 1: Select a research paper. Write a public summary of it.
Over the last few years, lifestyles have changed dramatically. Cell-phone use has changed from just texting and calling to being able to access the internet and social media. Many people are also developing applications for Smartphones so that they can have different games or be able to do things that once could have only been done on a computer screen. Many children now have started using these phones to play games or watch videos. This study focuses on adolescents, those is grades 8-12, on how they might be affected with the change. Their goals are to document adolescents’ psychological well-being like happiness, self-esteem, self-satisfaction domain satisfaction and life satisfaction while focusing on their economic conditions as well as their screen-time. Many studies have seen how social media and internet use might be linked to psychological well-being, but this study includes the economic factor as well as their screen-time. Smartphones are still fairly new so this research will help to see possible outcomes of constant use and access to social media and the internet.
Chapter 11 Exercise 2: Select four research papers. Develop a newsletter or blog based on these articles.
Papers:
Cross-Cultural Correlates of Life Satisfaction and Self-Esteem
Life-Span Development of Self-Esteem and its Effects on Important Life Outcomes
Affective and Daily Event Predictors of Life Satisfaction in College Students
Self-Esteem Variability Predicts Arterial Stiffness Trajectories in Healthy Adolescent Females
The development of a strong sense of self serves as an important tool for a satisfactory life in adulthood. Self-esteem may have a long lasting impact on an individual, and therefore, is worth exploring in developmental research. A positive correlation was discovered between occupational status and self-esteem (Bachman & O’Malley, 1977), displaying the importance of self image on an individual’s occupational achievements and capabilities.
A 2012 study examined the relationship between self-esteem and various components of an individual’s life that would constitute a satisfactory life, such as relationship satisfaction, job satisfaction, salary, depression, and health (Orth, 2012). The study, using 1,824 participants, as well as validated surveys, found a significant positive correlation between self-esteem and life satisfaction in relationship status, job satisfaction, salary and health, as well as a significant negative correlation between self-esteem and depression.
Furthermore, a cross-cultural study found a strong positive correlation between life satisfaction and self-esteem (Diener & Diener, 1995). This study utilized a sample of 13,118 college students from 31 nations, provides us with reliable data due to its large and diverse sample size.
A 1998 study examined daily events and life satisfaction. This study include 72 college students from introduction to psychology classes. They complete multiple choice surveys which focused on life satisfaction, mood, health, quality of sleep and affect balance. To measure their life satisfaction results, they used the five-item Satisfaction with Life Scale made by Diener and associates (1985). Their results indicated that affective and daily events were related. Consequently, these two variables can affect life satisfaction. In a 2013 study, 130 females between the ages of 15 and 19 were examined. Given that self-esteem has affected the psychological well-being on people, researchers wanted to find out if it would also affect physical health. Over the course of 2.5 years, these girls visited the research center every 6 months. There they answered multiple questionnaires as well as participated in a vascular function test. To measure their self-esteem variability and trait self-esteem they used a 7 point response scale for the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. They found that regardless whether self-esteem is positive or negative, if self-esteem is fluctuating, females experience an acceleration of vascular stiffening (Ross, Liu, Tomfohr, and Miller, 2013).
