Think about a situation in which you were communicating your ideas about an issue with someone who had an alternative point of view. It can be a work situation in which you were trying to solve a problem or a conversation with a friend where you were discussing a personal or public issue. Using your understanding of the components of critical thinking, discuss the elements of thought that you successfully used to communicate your ideas about the issue. Reflect on the purpose of the discussion: · Why you were having the conversation. · The outcomes you were both seeking. · The points of view presented, both yours and the other person's. · The reasoning behind the points of view. · The information that was presented. · What questions one or both of you asked to gain a better understanding of the issue. · Assumptions that were made on either part. Page 2 The Debilitating Effects of TV on Children Resources Throughout this course, you will be analyzing the arguments and reasoning of authors on different issues in psychology. Review the blog post by Dr. John M. Grohol, The Debilitating Effects of TV on Children, listed in this unit's studies. Use your understanding of critical thinking skills and the Argument Analysis Worksheet to analyze the author's position. In this discussion, address at least one of the main arguments along with the supporting evidence used by the author. Also, consider what the author is assuming to be true in order to uphold the argument. Does he provide evidence for his assumptions? Describe his assumptions, both supported and unsupported. What evidence does he cite to support to his assumptions and arguments? Using APA citations and references, give proper credit to authors of information used to support your arguments. Include the following elements in your main post to the discussion: · Discuss one of the main arguments made by the author to support his position and include evidence used to support the author's argument. · Discuss assumptions the author makes. Page 3 You have reviewed some of the principles and standards described in the APA's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct Web page, as well as an overview of some of the ethical concerns specific to the practice of psychotherapy and research. Ethical standards are designed to provide a framework from which the psychologist makes ethical decisions for which there may be no easy answer. Ethical Dilemma Imagine you are a psychotherapist in private practice. You and two of your colleagues, Derek and Caroline, work together in private practice along with several other psychotherapists. You, Derek, and Caroline have developed a program of treatment for children with ADHD and their families that you call "Pause, Plan, and Play." The program runs for five weeks and families attend sessions twice a week for an hour and a half at a time. In your program, you have activities designed to treat and manage symptoms of ADHD for the children, the parents, and the family as a whole. The activities are based in cognitive-behavioral and family systems theory and interventions. No medications are given as part of the intervention of the program. You, Derek, and Caroline would like to conduct research on your program to test and demonstrate its effectiveness. The three of you are excited to share your program with the world and to be published researchers. You plan to conduct the research yourselves and to have families in your own practice participate in the research. You will randomly assign families to either the treatment group, where they will participate in the program, or a control group where they will participate in the types of therapy that the psychotherapists in your practice usually use with ADHD. As another measure to compare with treatment results, families who are currently on a waiting list will also answer a pre- and post-research survey, but will not receive treatment. The questions on the survey will ask about their children's ADHD at the beginning and the end of the same five-week period that the study takes place. Using this group will help insure that time was not the factor that produced changes in the children's ADHD symptoms. Consider ethical concerns for your research study that you, Derek, and Caroline need to be aware of and prepare for. In your post, address three or more ethical concerns of conducting the research study. To help guide you in your discussion and support your thinking on the areas of ethical concern, use the APA Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct, the book chapters by Nagy, Thinking Critically about Ethics, and Ethics in research and publication from this unit's studies. Your post to the discussion dilemma should include the following: · A description of at least three potential ethical dilemmas in conducting the research study. · Arguments to support your position (case information and APA ethical principles and standards). · Evidence (information) to support your arguments. Page 4 An important part of research is understanding what we can do with the information that is gained in the research, or in other words, the implications for the findings. In this discussion, you consider the implications of the findings of a research study on fathers' roles in their children's socioemotional development. While psychology has a long history of researching attachment, early research focused on mothers' relationships with children. It has not always been clear what a father's role is in children's development. Fortunately, there is a great deal of research examining how fathers are an important part of children's development. Once you have read the article, "Transactional Relations Between Father Involvement and Preschoolers' Socioemotional Adjustment," linked in the Unit 3 studies, the psychology perspective challenge for you is to consider the implications for the findings of this study. Once you read article, complete the following: · Describe what the authors studied. · Describe the findings. (How you understand the findings.) · Discuss the implications of the findings. (What value is there in the findings? How can we apply them? How could we effectively get this information out to parents who could benefit from it? Are there any risks or other drawbacks to implementing the findings?)