Classic and Contemporary Studies - Child

Classic and Contemporary Studies - Child

1. Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg

   • Aim: Investigate the similarities and differences in the ratio of attachment types in different countries.
   • Procedure: A meta analysis was conducted of 32 separate studies in 8 different countries (a total of 1990 strange situation procedures) and similarities and differences in attachment types were evaluated. Studies that involved children with special needs, children over 2 years of age and children in overlapping samples were excluded from the study.
   • Results: Secure attachments were the most common type of attachment in all 8 countries. In individualistic cultures, such as Germany, there was a high number of insecure avoidant attachments, this is likely to be caused by the fact that individualistic counties promote individuality and independence.In collectivist cultures, such as Japan, there were found to be high levels of insecure resistant attachment types, likely to be because collectivist cultures promote dependency. It was found that there was more variation in attachment types within cultures than between different cultures.
   • Evaluation:
     • The strange situation procedure was developed by an American researcher to evaluate attachment types of American children. By using it in different courtries it could be imposing western beliefs and perspectives onto these countries, for example, in Japan a high number of insecure resistant but this could be considered to be a secure type of attachment in that country. The study is therefore withholds and ethnocentric bias and assumes that behaviour displayed by children has the same meaning in every country.
     • The data gathered was predominantly from countries with an individualistic culture which could have made results less valid and true to real life.

2. Li et al

   • Aim: To investigate how the quality of infant-toddler care and preschool care would effect a childs cognitive, language and pre-academic outcomes.
   • Procedure: At the age of one month, children and their families were assessed using observation, questionnaires and child assessments, also information about the family background was gathered. Quality of childcare was assessed using the Observational Record of the Caregiving Environment (ORCE) between the ages of 6 and 54 months in settings including home and at nursery. 44 minute observations were made over the period of two days at nursery and the nurseries were rated to distinguish if the infant care was of a high or low quality. A score over 3.0 indicated high- quality infant care. At the end of the infant-toddler period the Bayley Mental Developmental Index was used to assess the childs conginitve development and at the end of the preschool period the Woodcock-Johnson Cognitive and Achievement Batteries and Preschool Language Scale (PLS) was used to measure language, memory and intelligence. The children were classified into four groups: Low-Low, High-Low, Low-High and High-High.
   • Sample: 1364 families recruited from North America in 1991.
   • Results: Quality of infant care was found to have a significant impact on cognitive outcomes of a child. It was found that high-quality toddler-infant care declined by the end of the preschool period if children received low-quality preschool care. It was also found that high-quality preschool care had a significant positive impact on cognitive, reading, language and maths results. Both high-quality infant-toddler care and high-quality preschool care produced the best outcomes and low-quality infant-toddler care and low-quality preschool care produced the worst outcome. There was little difference found between low-quality infant-toddler care and high-quality preschool care and high-quality infant-toddler care and low-quality preschool care but it seemed high-low benefited memory development more nan low-high benefited math skills more.
   • Evaluation: