This course emphasizes the role of the scientific method in understanding child

This course emphasizes the role of the scientific method in understanding child psychology. For this assignment, students will apply what they have been learning about research methods in child psychology and will write effectively in response to the assigned prompts. This is a summative assessment.
Emphasis on Research essays are formal essays, but only a paragraph or two is expected. In college, it is expected that students will attend to the quality of their writing – spelling, grammar, order of reasoning, and so on – and consider who will be reading the essay (audience). Students are to submit their original work, written by themselves, and plagiarism is to be avoided.
Outcomes:
As a result of completing this assignment, students will demonstrate they are able to:
1. describe uses of the scientific method within developmental psychology.
2. evaluate classic and current research presented in this course in the area of child psychology.
3. utilize critical thinking in arriving at conclusions about child psychology.
4. write effectively on topics in psychology using psychological concepts and terms.
Instructions:
1. Please write a short essay answering ALL of the prompts below. 1 – 2 paragraphs will do.
2. You are to evaluate the information presented in this course for this assignment. Please use the textbook as the source for your answers and please use other materials from this course (lectures, e.g.) for support as needed.
o What is described in the textbook is unique. Students who choose not to follow the instructions and instead use an outside source or sources will likely not succeed: may lose a significant number of points.
o You are required to use the textbook for this course as the source for this essay.
o Grading is partly based on your learning from the textbook chapters assigned, and not based on what you can Google, for instance.
3. Writing quality counts toward the grade per the grading rubric.
A. The essay is made up of complete sentences.
B. The essay follows standard rules of English for spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar.
C. Connections from one idea to another are clearly identifiable in the essay.
D. The essay stays on topic from beginning to end
E. No quotations are used in the essay.
F. Citations are used appropriately, e.g, when paraphrasing from the textbook.
G. Any paraphrasing from the textbook or other course materials should be cited.
1.
 I don’t care how you cite (MLA, APA, etc.) but you do need to cite.
 Review the Avoiding Plagiarism assignment as many times as needed.
H. The essay is the student’s own original work, written specifically for this assignment
Assignment Prompts:
Chapter 6, Box 6.4 in your textbook, “A Closer Look” reviews some studies on sign language. One study described (Senghas et al., 2004) is on a the development of a Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL). Based on the information about the study by Senghas et al. (2004)described in Box 6.4 and based on what you’ve learned about research methods (textbook, assigned lecture), please answer the following prompts in your own well written essay:
1. What type of study was this?
o Explain your answer using the information learned about research methods from this course.
o See Week 2 materials( I have the week 2 research method materials below in the file upload area) for a review of research methods used in child psychology.
2. What were the findings?
o Summarize from the description located in Box 6.4 in the textbook. Direct quotes will not earn points: you must summarize the information in your own words.
3. What additional research could follow this study on the same or related topic? What questions do you propose your suggested follow up study would investigate?