Young Children’s Interest in Live Animals, Article Critique Example

Introduction

This study embodies three experiments. The researchers investigated children’s affinity to animals. In Experiment 1 involved subjects who were 11? to 40?month?old children. They were offered a free?play session and encouraged to interact with a number of attractive toys along with a fish and a hamster (two live animals). In Experiment 2 the same methodology was applied this time using 18? to 36?month?old children, but adding two different animals. They were a snake and a spider. The aim of this experiment was to evaluate the children’s reaction towards the two sets of animals in detect whether the children could differentiate between the harmful and harmless of these sets of animals.

Thirdly, experiment 3, applied a controlled strategy utilizing paired?preference paradigm wa in assessing 18? to 33?month?old interactions of children with three live animals (a fish, hamster, and gecko) in relation to three physically similar toy animals. In summarizing the three experiments researchers discovered that children interacted better with live animals more toys. Inadvertently, their behavior towards animals was remarkably different form when they played with toys. Besides, their conversation about animals was more profound than concerning their toys. They kept asking questions regarding activities of these animals with which they were fascinated.

During the experiment parents were encouraged to observe their children’s behavior. They discovered that also they were forced to spend more time interacting with these animals as their children directed attention to them rather than the toys. Consequently, researchers concluded that their research supported the assumption that humans do have an attraction for animals even when other evenly captivating devices are found in the same environment.

Analysis

This author will focus on the responses of children in the second experiment. A hypothesis was not designed prior to the commencement of the study neither did one emerge as a consequence of it. None of the experiments showed evidence of any distinct hypothesis as some experiments do. From the abstract the researchers delved straight into the background and then experiment 1. As such, the reader did not have a premise for evaluating the boundaries of none of the experiments because concepts were not clearly operationalized through definition or conceptualization. All that is known was that the researchers were comparing children’s reaction towards live animals as against identical toy animals. This was in an effort to validate subsequent studies.

The research design obviously is quantitative adapting a subset of experiments with a control group in experiment11 as the method. This appears unusual, but it can be concluded that it served the purpose well as a series of comparative experiments within a single study design. Recruitment of participants was not fully explained neither in the study .The sample can be considered representative, but not enough for generalizing widely across populations, internationally. Experiments 1 used 38, experiment 2- 38 and experiment 3- 20. Experiments due to the small sample size do not offer much scope for generality.

Conclusion

Instruments used could be identified as toys and categories of animals in observing reactions. Analysis of data was conducted by adapting coding measurements in documenting children’s behavior. Further, statistical applications of mean, median and standard deviations were applied. Findings related to the real world situation. However, being able to relate a finding to a real world situation may not be enough in contributing to the body of knowledge within the science. This experiment did not answer why the phenomenon occurs, but merely said what. In this sense it could lack the true element of an experiment indicating further study in this field.

References

LoBue1, V. Bloom Pickard, M. Sherman, K. Axford, C., DeLoache, J. (2013). Young children’s Interest in Live Animals. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 31(1), 57–69.