Blakemore and Cooper Evalutation
Validity
Reliability
Generalisation/population validity
Quantitative data
Ethical consideration
Exposing animals to a dark room for two weeks and then up until 5 months of age a visually depriving environment, could be considered to be psychologically harmful for the kittens
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Psychological/physical harm - kittens visions were physically impaired due to rearing in darkness + limited visual stimulation. Some distress from physiological procedures + from being seperated from mothers - noted that kittens did not seem upset by monotony.
The kittens may have been distressed by being separated from their mother while in the visual apparatus and being tested
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High controls in lab conditions ensured few extraneous variables could influence the outcomes
Precise - single cell recording
Behavioural data
Controls that were used (such as times in each environment, restrictions on seeing anything other than stripes) will increase the internal validity
Looking at both behavioural and neural differences in the kittens increased the validity of the data when they both showed the same effects
Controls allow for exact replicability of the research so establishing test-retest ability to assess reliability
Ecological validity
Do the findings from cats apply to us?
Although their brains are much smaller, their visual cortex is likely to be very similar
Situation was unnatural for a kitten so has low EV - not reflecting a real life situation
But that is what the research required - an atypical environment
Obvious limitations to how generalisable these data are to the development of human perception
Only 2 of the kittens that were examined post-mortem so their data can't be easily extrapolated
Separate guidlines for using animals in psychological research ad this research met them...
Not too large a sample and no unnecessary harm was used
Used animals as it wouldn't be possible to do with humans but such research can show us how we might ensure normal human development