Assignment: Developmental Psychology
During this unit, some of the class examples include language development and how children acquire and use language to communicate needs and wants. In this assignment, you will learn to apply test calculation skills in a different context, moral development in children. By morality, we are referring to the idea of what is right and what is wrong, fair and unfair, just and unjust.
Research on moral development in psychology generally falls into two categories: moral conduct (exhibiting behaviors that demonstrate moral development) and moral reasoning (the ability to understand and know about morality). For example, a researcher who measures how often Sandy steals candy from her desk when she is out of the room, when the child has specifically been told not to do this, is measuring a behavior associated with morality. On the other hand, a researcher who tells another child about this stealing episode and asks, "What do you think about what Sandy did?" is investigating moral understanding without asking the child to actually do something that is moral/immoral.
Let us consider the following research scenario where researchers are interested in the moral development of children at two different ages: 5 and 7 (major cognitive shifts may happen around these ages). These researchers are using Turiel's model of moral reasoning to assess the children. Turiel proposes that moral reasoning is comprised of different domains in which the child applies what they know about right and wrong. Two of the most important domains are the moral domain and the societal domain: the moral domain deals with peoples' rights, fairness and justice, while the social domain has more to do with politeness and relationships.
Until the mid-1970's children's moral reasoning was assessed using adult measures, and it is hardly surprising that researchers found that children did not appear to display moral reasoning until adolescence. Turiel used his model to develop a method of interviewing and testing children in language and activities that were understandable to young children, and found that he could show their ability to understand these concepts at a young age.
Our researchers are interested learning more about when children develop understanding in the moral domain. They recruited two samples of 16 children: one sample of five-year-olds another of seven-year-olds. All children in both samples answered questions to see how quickly they could distinguish between moral and societal transgressions and explain their answer satisfactorily (in minutes). The time it took for each child can be found in the table below.
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SAMPLE #1: Age 5
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SAMPLE #2: Age 7
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Child ID #
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Time
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Child ID#
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Time
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1
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32
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A
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15
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2
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48
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B
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12
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3
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46
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C
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8
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4
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40
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D
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9
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5
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44
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E
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12
|
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6
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74
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F
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18
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7
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65
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G
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14
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8
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47
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H
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13
|
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9
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48
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I
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10
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10
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55
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J
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8
|
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11
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50
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K
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15
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12
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39
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L
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12
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13
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42
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M
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13
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14
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41
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N
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15
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15
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45
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O
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10
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16
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38
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P
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8
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M =
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47.13
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M =
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SD =
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10.40
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SD =
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Task
1) Calculate the mean and standard deviation for the data at age 7 and fill in the values for the final column above. SHOW YOUR WORK.
2) Assume that the average time for a 5 year old in the population is 50 minutes, with a known standard deviation of 12 minutes. Our researchers want to test whether or not the mean of our sample of 5 year olds is significantly different from the population mean. State the test you will use to answer this question, conduct the test (including hypothesis-testing notation), and then explain your results in a sentence or two. SHOW YOUR WORK.
3) Returning to the sample of 7 year olds, we do not have population information for this sample. However, imagine our researchers predict that the sample of 7 year olds comes from a population with a mean that is lower than 14 minutes, and want to test this prediction. State the test you will use to answer this question, conduct the test (including hypothesis-testing notation), and then explain your results in a sentence or two. SHOW YOUR WORK.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also Include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.