Homework Assignment 2 Developmental Psychology
Homework Assignment 2 Developmental Psychology
Homework Assignment #2 Developmental Psychology
During this unit, some of the class examples include language development and how children acquire and use language to communicate needs and wants. In this assignment, you will learn to apply test calculation skills in a different context, moral development in children. By morality, we are referring to the idea of what is right and what is wrong, fair and unfair, just and unjust. Research on moral development in psychology generally falls into two categories: moral conduct (exhibiting behaviors that demonstrate moral development) and moral reasoning (the ability to understand and know about morality). For example, a researcher who measures how often Sandy steals candy from her desk when she is out of the room, when the child has specifically been told not to do this, is measuring a behavior associated with morality. On the other hand, a researcher who tells another child about this stealing episode and asks, “What do you think about what Sandy did?” is investigating moral understanding without asking the child to actually do something that is moral/immoral. Let us consider the following research scenario where researchers are interested in the moral development of children at two different ages: 5 and 7 (major cognitive shifts may happen around these ages). These researchers are using Turiel’s model of moral reasoning to assess the children. Turiel proposes that moral reasoning is comprised of different domains in which the child applies what they know about right and wrong. Two of the most important domains are the moral domain and the societal domain: the moral domain deals with peoples’ rights, fairness and justice, while the social domain has more to do with politeness and relationships.
ORDER NOW FOR CUSTOMIZED, PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPERS
Until the mid-1970’s children’s moral reasoning was assessed using
adult measures, and it is hardly surprising that researchers found that children did not appear to display moral reasoning until adolescence. Turiel used his model to develop a method of interviewing and testing children in language and activities that were understandable to young children, and found that he could show their ability to understand these concepts at a young age.