Psychology Essay: Introduction to Psychology
Writing Assignment #1: Methods
Researchers were interested in whether the amount of time spent reading to children in the
toddler years predicts the size of the children’s vocabulary at age 5. Families with two-year-old
children were recruited, and parents recorded the amount of time they spend reading to their
children every day for two weeks. When the children were 5 years old, the researchers re-
contacted the families, and administered standardized measures of vocabulary. They found
support for their hypothesis that the amount of time spent reading to children at age 2 predicts
vocabulary size at age 5. Is this study a true experiment? Why or why not? If not, explain how
you would design an experiment that would allow you to test whether reading to toddlers causes
them to develop bigger vocabularies at age 5.
Instructor’s Name
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Introduction to Psychology
Children’s minds are blank during their birth. Their interactions shape the cognitive skills that enable them to grow into mature individuals who operate independently. In many cases, parents take time to read to them during their toddler years, enabling them to form adequate vocabularies when they begin speaking. Therefore, the study on whether reading to toddlers predicts their size of vocabulary at the age of 5 years is correct.
For a child to begin speaking, they require a range of vocabulary to express themselves. For instance, contemporary society has exposed toddlers to the outside world through cartoons. Many toddlers love to watch them and through this, they learn different languages even when the particular language is uns...