PSY210 - Summer 2023 Take-Home Short Essay Exam
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PSY210 - Summer 2023
Take-Home Short Essay Exam
Choose 3 of the 7 questions on the following page to respond to. Each response should be between 1000-1200 words. For all questions, please review experimental research that was discussed in the lectures and readings as you give your answer.
Your responses will be graded based on how well they reflect an understanding of the concepts and experiments discussed in the lectures and readings, and whether you have answered the question in full, responding to all of the parts of the question, and all the requirements listed on this page. There are no formal style requirements, other than for your response to be grammatical and easily understood. You do not need a title page. Single-spaced or double- spaced are both fine.
When drawing from lectures or readings, please cite the specific lecture number (e.g., Lecture 6), or reading (e.g., Pinker, The Blank Slate) right in your text. A separate reference section is not required.
No outside sources are required —you can complete these essays perfectly without any outside references. If you do use outside sources, you must provide the full citation in APA format, in the text (e.g., Smith, 2017), and in a separate reference list below your answer that contains the complete citation (this does not count toward your word count) .
You should not use any direct quotations in your answer. Please also make sure to use entirely your own wording in your response. Pasting in a sentence from a reading, or from the internet, and looking up synonyms for a few of the words does not count as “in your own words”. Responses will be submitted to the plagiarism detector “Ouriginal” on Quercus (see the syllabus for more information). This software compares your work against published material – books, articles, internet sources, and papers submitted by others – and highlights areas that are overly similar to other sources. You will be able to seeyour score when you submit, which will give you a chance to reflect on whether you have properly written the response in your own words. You may re-submit a new version of your work after editing without penalty, as long as it is before the due date and time.
Finally, a reminder that the responses must be your own work, and you should not collaborate or discuss the questions with your classmates or anyone else. You also are not permitted to use any AI assistance (such as ChaptGPT or the like) for this assignment.
Please submit your answers as one Word document. For each question you choose to respond to, please copy and paste the question into your document, followed by your answer. At the end of each answer, please write the number of words in your answer, like I did below.
1. There is evidence for a critical period in language acquisition —a period of time where learning works best. (It’s often the case, for instance, that if you learn a new language after puberty, you’ll never speak it like a native.) Choose one other domain of development that we have discussed, such as morality, theory of mind, numerical cognition, etc. Do you think this non-language domain also has a critical period? Describe an experiment to test your hypothesis, making sure to include relevant controls, and to describe your participant’s age(s), your method, and what your hypothesis would predict the results would be.
2. Most developmental psychologists believe that our science would suffer if we only studied children from rich Western cultures. Describe one experiment, discussed in class or in the readings, that compared children from different cultures--and tellus what the experiment found, and what it told us more broadly about the psychological capacity it was exploring. Then, design your own cross-cultural experiment to explore whether some aspect of development is universal or whether it varies across cultures. Make sure to include relevant controls, and to describe your participant’sage(s), your method, and what your hypothesis would predict the results would be.
3. In the Bloom lecture and Pinker reading on parenting, various studies were presented that suggest that parenting have much effect on individual differences in personality or intelligence. But what about the role of parenting for other ways in which people are different? Chose another way in which people differ (such as language-learning abilities – but don’t use this example!), and then, using the methods described by Pinker and Bloom, design an experiment to test how much of the variance is due to parenting, how much is due to genes, and how much is due to non-shared environment.
4. Imagine that you’re talking to a new artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, and you suddenly start to suspect that it’s been trained to think like and talk like a typical 4-year-old. What are three questions that you could ask it to determine whether this is true? (i.e., Where you would expect it to give a different response than adults.) For each one, explain — by discussing and describing experimental research —why you expect it to give different responses.
5. You tell a philosopher friend that you just took this course (PSY210) and she says, “Well, that wouldn’t be interesting tome. I don’tcare about children — I’m interested in the big philosophical questions about the mind.” Make an argument that she’s wrong —that the study of the minds of children bear on the most fundamental philosophical issues there are. Give at least two examples (including discussions of experimental research) discussed in the lectures and/or readings.
6. It’s obvious that human adults have capacities that no other creature has – we can have conversations about abstract issues, we have science and technology, we write poems, and soon. But is there anything that a 2-year-old possesses that no other creature has? Drawing upon at least 3 of the readings or lectures, answer this question yes or no, and make an argument for your answer. For full marks you must discuss research with children AND research with non-human animals.
7. Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau walk into a bar, and get into an argument about babies. Hobbes thinks babies start off without a conscience or morality —“nasty, brutish, and short”. Without government to control us, we would be in a state of barbarity. Rousseau disagrees, saying that human nature is essentially good, and that we could have lived peaceful and happy lives well before the development of anything like the modern state. We are “noble savages”. What’s the best evidence for Hobbes’ position? What’s the best evidence for Rousseau’sposition? Who do you think is right?
2023-08-15