PSYC 333 Developmental Case Study Assignment

Case Study Assignment Overview

This semester you will progressively develop a set of case studies describing the developmental history and conditions of a hypothetical child. The case studies will be developed in phases, with a new step due at the end of each unit.

The goal is for you to integrate and apply research on different domains of development into a “whole child” and to analyse how the case illustrates various themes or principles in developmental science.

Each Case Study Assignment is worth 125 points. This is a short essay format. Create a document with your name and your team number on it, your case/vignette, and your responses to each prompt.

Submit via Blackboard, where it will be scanned for plagiarism using Safe Assign, and then graded. You are welcome to discuss the assignment with your peers, but each of you much turn in a unique resolution and explanations.

The Case Study Assignment for each unit has two parts:

1. The Case/Vignette (25 pts). The Case/Vignette describes a child and the child’s developmental conditions and issues, in 1-2 pages single-spaced. Your cases should follow a particular child’s development and the child’s developmental conditions and should present some issues that the child is facing, or a problem or question to be solved.

Your four Cases should be progressive and cumulative, focusing on the same child each time, but each time bringing in new issues and content from the most recent unit of the course (see instructions specific to each unit for more details). The cases should accurately reflect the research in the selected areas.

1. The Analysis (100 pts). This is the “study” part of the case study! In this section of the assignment, you will respond to several questions or prompts prompted by several questions that ask you to interpret, extend or analyze your vignette using themes and research from the course. The prompts will be provided in the instructions for each unit’s Case Study Assignment.

General considerations for Writing your Cases/Vignettes:

What information should the Vignette include? Your Case/Vignette should illustrate how development plays out in a particular individual with that person’s unique combination of characteristics and circumstances. Your Vignette should include the following sorts of information:

1. Setting: where, when, why. Where and when is the story taking place? What precipitated the events and actions on which the story is based?
2. Main actor, other actors. Obviously, the child should be a principal character. Who are the other key actors and why are they involved?
3. Conditions, Context, Environments. What are the developmental conditions of this child? In other words, provide information about the physical, social and cultural “environments” or context of which s/he is a part? In what ways in which these circumstances limit the actors’ freedom of action, or create opportunities for them?
4. Issues, problems, interests. What are the main issues that the child and other actors in the case are facing? Pose a problem or question that must be confronted or solved, or a prediction that needs to be made. These should be based on your choice of themes/principles, from the options offered for that unit.

What makes for a good vignette or case? Here are some elements of a good case to keep in mind:

1. A good case tells a story.
2. A good case focuses on an interest-arousing issue.
3. A good case is current.
4. A good case creates empathy with the central characters.
5. A good case is relevant to the reader.
6. A good case should provide a good illustration of the theme or issue at hand.
7. A good case can be conflict provoking.
8. A good case is decision forcing.
9. A good case has generality (is relevant to understanding other people)
10. A good case is short.

Unit 1 Assessment: Case Study Assignment 1

Goals

I created this assignment so that students will have opportunities to:

• Integrate and apply research on different domains of development into a “whole child”
• Analyse how the case illustrates various themes or principles in developmental science.

General Instructions

This is your major assignment for the “synthesis week” (Week 5: 2/18 and 2/20) of Unit 1. During class that week, you will also complete, in your teams, an ELA (22 points) in which you will be asked to synthesise material from Unit 1.

This ELA is designed, in part, to help you think through some of the issues you will want to address in your individual case study. See last page of this doc for a rubric that summarises our expectations on this assignment.

Steps for completing the assignment are as follows:

1. First, review the prompts, and the rubric/grading criteria for the assignment (also posted in blackboard), so that you know what is expected.
2. Create a document with your name and your team number on it.
3. Respond to the prompts below in your document.
4. Submit your assignment by 11:59 PM Thursday February 20, through the link under Unit 1 on our course Blackboard site, where it will be automatically scanned for plagiarism using Safe Assign, and then graded by your GTA.
5. You are welcome (and encouraged) to discuss the assignment with your peers, but each of you much turn in a unique case, resolution, explanations, etc…

Assignment Prompts

1. Case/Vignette (20%). Your case should describe a child and the child’s developmental conditions and issues, related to content from Unit 1 of the course (e.g., prenatal development. brain development and growth, birth, infant development, early care-giving environment, genetic influences, etc.…).

Your case should accurately reflect the research in Unit 1 and should be 1-2 pages single-spaced. Be sure that your case illustrates the following themes, because you will be asked about them later:

• The role of the child’s “socio-cultural context” in their development
• How children contribute to their own development (active role of child)
• How early infant qualities (young infants’ characteristics, states, and perceptual, and motor abilities) influence their adaptation to their environments and development.

Not sure where to start? Here are some ideas… You could write about an infant who: was just adopted by a single father; is an identical twin; was born into poverty and suffering from malnutrition; sustains a brain injury early in life;

whose mother is deciding whether to breastfeed or bottle-feed, or deciding whether/when to go back to work; whose family just migrated to the US; whose family recently moved from a farm to an urban area.

Feel free to make something up entirely on your own. You could even draw ideas from your own life or that of someone you know. You could take your story in many different directions, as long as you can justify that with the course material.

2. Case Analysis (30%). Next, “analyse” your case, based on what you have learned from the relevant course material. In other words, explain why your child’s development went in the direction(s) described in the case. Whereas your Case should focus on what happened, this part should focus on explaining why those things happened, according to the course material. Focus your explanation on the following issues:

• What factors have created risk or resilience for the child in your case?
• What role has been played by aspects of the socio-cultural context?
• What are some of your child’s own contributions to these patterns? In particular, how have your child’s early abilities and characteristics (sensory and perceptual abilities, motor abilities, etc..) contributed to their adaptation to their environment and development?

The remaining prompts can each be addressed in about a paragraph:

3. Biology and Behaviour (10%). Consider your child’s early care-giving experiences, particularly the type/level of parental attention the child receives in early life, and what the course material on biology and behaviour suggests about the impact of early parental attention on genes, brain, behaviour, and physical development.

According to the material on Environment–>Genotype effects (epigenetics), how would you expect your child’s early care-giving to be related to his or her genes, brain, and behaviour (e.g., responses to stress)?

According to the material on physical development, what would you expect for your child’s growth? Support your arguments with empirical evidence.

4. Fetal Experience (10%). Discuss a couple of ways in which your child’s fetal experiences might have contributed to your child’s postnatal (i.e., after birth) development. Mention empirical evidence that supports your points.
5. Brain Development (10%). Imagine that your child was born without the use of his or her hands, and as a result uses his or her feet for most tasks that are typically done with one’s hands.

Considering what is known about brain plasticity, what is the most likely thing that will happen to the area of the child’s cerebral cortex that would normally process sensory information from the hands? Why? What evidence supports your thinking about this?

6. Perception and Action (10%). Suppose your child’s parent notices that the child will crawl to the edge of the basement stairs and stop (indicating that they have an understanding of the danger of stairs). Would you conclude that the parent won’t need to be terribly vigilant when the child learns to walk in the future? Why or why not? Mention empirical research to support your argument.
7. Research Interpretation and Application (10%). Review the findings of the study by Zeskind and Ramey (1979) described on the next page. What do these findings suggest about the impact of the child’s environment on the child’s early development?

What do they tell us about the impact of the child on the environment? How do these findings relate to the story in your case study? An Intervention for Low-Birth-Weight Babies

Zeskind & Ramey (1979) conducted a study of infants and mothers from very low-income backgrounds. The study was an experiment and a longitudinal study. Half of the babies were born with very low birth weight (LBW babies), and the other half were full-term typical birth-weight.

Half of the babies in each group were assigned to an Intervention (a day-care program) designed to enhance infant cognitive development that they started at 3 months of age. The other half were assigned to the control group and received no day-care intervention.

The researchers measured infant development (with a cognitive test that yielded a “developmental quotient” or DQ) and maternal responsiveness when the babies were 3 months, 24 months and 36 months (note that they did not directly train mothers- the intervention focused on the babies). Here are the results:

Cognitive Development: In the control group, the LBW babies had lower DQs than the typical babies. By 24 months both LBW and typical babies in the intervention program had higher DQs, and there were no differences between LBW and typical babies.

Maternal Responsiveness: At first, mothers were equally responsive to all babies. But at 24 and 26 months, mothers of LBW babies in the Control group were less responsive than they were at 3 months, and less responsive than mothers of typical babies. In the Intervention group, maternal responsiveness stayed high, and there were no differences between mothers of LBW babies and typical babies.

General Criteria/Expectations

60657075808590951003 Months 24 months 36 months LBW- Control LBW- Intervention Typical- Control Typical- Intervention Effect of Intervention Program on DQ/IQ in Typical and LBW Babies Infant DQ or IQ

Effect of Intervention Program on DQ/IQ in Typical and LBW Babies

Infant DQ or IQ

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