The context of the journal article
The journal article, Measuring Implicit Attitudes of 4-Year-Olds: The Preschool Implicit Association Test, by Dario Cvencek, Anthony Greenwald, and Andrew Meltzoff presented the results of two social cognition measure (IAT) tests using the preschool implicit association test (PSIAT) on several 4 years old children. The sample space for the research consisted of 65 respondents, consisting of 33 boys and 32 girls with the average age of the participants being 54.51 months.
The primary aim of the research was to establish the effectiveness of PSIAT in evaluating attitude towards liked objects (first variable) and gender attitudes (second variable). Through the ANOVA test, the results indicated that there was a positive correlation between PSIAT and the two variables (Cvencek, Greenwald, and Meltzoff 189). Specifically, the measure of gender attitude variable indicated discriminant weight since there was a clear variance in the roles played by children based on their gender.
From the findings, the researchers suggested how PSIAT could be used to study the development of socially important stereotypes and perceptions that children pick at a young age. This journal article is relevant to my career specialization since it examines gender attitudes and roles developed by children as they interact with society. As a specialist in children and adolescent development, I might use the PSIAT to carry out further research on how gender and other social perceptions affect development in children.
The assumptions of the statistical test used in the journal article
The underlying assumption in the use of the correlation test was that there was no implicit-explicit correlation between each of the variables as independent entities. This means that the implicit measure was carried out first after which the explicit measure was addressed. With the apparent absence of independent meta-analyses, the fixed measures were adopted to align two bipolar scales, which presented averages for upper (+2) and lower bounds (-2) (Cvencek, Greenwald, and Meltzoff 192). The positive values indicated correlation while the negative values represented no correlation.
Research question related to the journal article
Research question
What is the effectiveness of PSIAT in evaluating attitude towards liked objects and gender attitudes among children?
Hypothesis
Null Hypothesis
There is a correlation between PSIAT and attitude variables such as attitude towards liked objects and attitudes influenced by gender among children.
Alternative Hypothesis
There is no correlation between PSIAT and attitude variables such as attitude towards liked objects and attitudes influenced by gender among children.
There is no alpha level provided in the research articles since the variables under investigation are difficult to quantify within the large sample space.
The results of the statistical test
The results of the ANOVA test indicated that there is a positive correlation between the attitude variables and the PSIAT.
For the girls, the statistical notation of the result is F (1, 60) = 15.24, p <.0001, d = 0.49.
For the boys, the statistical notation of the result is F (1, 60) = 43.48, p <.0001, d = 1.70.
The degree of freedom was 63.
The statistical value of F is 15.24, p is 0.0001, and d is 0.49.
The effect size is not provided.
The test statistic confirmed the null hypothesis since the correlation between the PSIAT and the two variables were positive. Specifically, the correlation for the first variable was 0.22 while that for the second variable was 0.43 (Cvencek, Greenwald, and Meltzoff 195). The positive values confirmed that the null hypothesis is valid.
Analysis of the strengths and limitations of the study
The conclusion of the statistical test is related to the research question since it confirmed that the PSIAT is an effective test that can be used to investigate the cognition in children as influenced by different attitude variables. In summary, the large sample space was ideal for testing the two variables. Besides, the use of ANOVA consisted to establish the correlation that exists between the variables. However, the use of one test was not sufficient to make a watertight conclusion.
Works Cited
Cvencek, Dario, Anthony Greenwald, and Andrew Meltzoff. “Measuring Implicit Attitudes of 4-Year-Olds: The Preschool Implicit Association Test”. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 109.1 (2011): 187-200. Print