Developmental Psychology Psychology Research Paper (Research Paper Sample)

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u HYPERLINK \l "_Toc512762066" Field notes PAGEREF _Toc512762066 \h 2Literature review PAGEREF _Toc512762067 \h 2Methodolgy PAGEREF _Toc512762068 \h 4References PAGEREF _Toc512762069 \h 7
Field notes
Developmental psychology studies involve the realization of an individual’s self-existence and the understanding of the dynamic changes which occur continually over the life of the individual from inception at birth until death.
The scene is set in a beautiful nursery classroom with colorful pictures in the background which depict an environment of learning for the children. The children are gathered around a square raised water pool reservoir in the room which provides them with an opportunity to play with the water and thus socialize easily in their different activities at the water pool.
The physical activity, social interaction and focus enabled by gathering at the pool enables the ease of observing behavior occurrence and repetition relevant to the theory of the mind under study by the researcher and observer.
Physical activity and social interaction amongst the children from the onset of the video plays a crucial role in showing how the interaction of the self and objects in the physical world and the likely reactions of others emanate from a motion, cause and effect sequence. This lays the foundation for the theory of the mind as the children have to have an idea of how other’s minds work.
Literature review
The concept of the theory of mind is well extrapolated in the video with the illustration of two distinct activities of increasing complexity. The first activity is with the psychologist demonstrating the unawareness of self in decisions made by a young child. The second activity depicts two different outcomes from decisions made by one younger and one older child when subjected to two control questions to gauge their belief of misrepresentation by another individual as an independent party.
In the first experiment the young child projects her changed belief about a task as her new reality will influence the answer of another child, Jane if asked what is in the box to be pencils. The child in the experiment had initially thought the box to have smarties while it actually had pencils and now projects her new reality to be what her counterpart, Jane will believe to be in the box. This depicts a clear illustration of the child’s unawareness of Jane as an independent mind.
In the second experiment sally places a marble in one bag “A” and leaves. Anne comes along and changes the location of the marble from the bag to another bag “B”. Sally now comes and the child is asked where Sally will look for the marble. The first younger child reaches out and gets the marble for Sally from location bag “B” in a display of pity for Sally who knows little about where the marble is. The second older child is able to distinguish between the two control questions, the memory question where the marble was in the beginning “bag A” and the reality question, where is the marble now which is “bag B”.