Dr. Bernstein kept a thorough record of her child's behavior and progress throughout the first year of life, with careful attention to the sounds and noises her baby made that seemed to lead up to later language usage. She also kept notes on how her own behavior affected her baby's vocalizing, in an attempt to learn how parent-child interactions influence language development. Later, in

Question

developing her own theory, she and her colleagues replicated the project on several dozen other children by observing them weekly throughout their first year of life. (a) What research methods were employed? What type of comparison was used? (b) Why was the research conducted on children other than Dr. Bernstein's? (c) If Dr. Bernstein observed that whenever she talked to her baby, the baby's rate of vocalizing increased, would this mean that her behavior "caused" the baby's? Why or why not?

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

(a) Assuming that Dr. Bernstein did not try to elicit or train specific aspects of language usage in her child, the basic method is naturalistic observation (and in her focus on her own child, one might argue a case study) and then a longitudinal design for the study conducted with colleagues. (b) The researchers would be interested in whether the initial observations of her own child generalized and reflected universal behaviors. (c) Causation should not be inferred from this type of observation. It would be necessary to experimentally vary the mother's vocalizations and other behavior to see what effect such treatments have on the baby's language development.