Frances Degen Horowitz

Child Development and the PITS: Simple Questions, Complex Answers, and Developmental Theory

The enormous popular interest in the field of child development makes it incumbent upon developmental scientists to convey with care the complexity of development lest oversimplified popular accounts gain credibility. Recent attempted models of development do include the range of variables and complexities that need to be accommodated in accounting for development. A model is presented here that incorporates many of the elements of recent models but elaborates on the role of experience in relation to the constitutional, cultural, economic, and social factors that contribute to advantages and disadvantages in childrens development. The importance of accommodating data from prior theoretical perspectives and the importance of the contributions from neuroimaging studies are discussed as they are critical for successful theory building in the field of child development.

John B. Watson's Legacy: Learning and Environment.

John B. Watsons contribution is evaluated in relation to his own time, with respect to his historical influence, and in light of current issues in developmental psychology. A survey of a non random sample of current developmental psychologists revealed no consensus with respect to Watsons legacy to developmental psychology

Scoring the NBAS: To recode or not to recode☆

Abstract Lester (1984) proposed a set of six clusters for the standard 27 items of the National Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS). Nine of these items were recorded to change the scale values for the categories. This analysis examined the impact of recording on the psychometric properties of the NBAS. First, correlations were compared between recorded and nonrecorded items within the clusters. Second, iteritem consistencies were computed within each cluster to determine the extent to which the variables measured a common behavioral dimension. Third, a principal components analysis was done to determine the extent to which recoding makes the clusters more distinguishable. The results indicated that the original scale resulted in greater within-cluster correlations and higher interitem consistencies. The recoding method did not result in more distinguisable behavioral clusters. Overall, the original scale provided more optimal psychometric properties.