peerScholar is an online platform, accessible through Quercus, that facilitates the submission of a rough draft, the review of that draft by a set of peer classmates, and the re-submission of a final draft. Details about the platform itself and instructions for Phases 1, 2, and 3 will be found in the course syllabus and on Quercus.

This document provides the topic for the peerScholar writing assignment for this term.

Topic: Human development during a global pandemic

Goal: The goal of this paper is to apply material from the course (specifically from Module 4: Human Development) to a current situation affecting your life and the lives of those around you. Because there is not a lot of research on the pandemic yet, the sources that you cite in your paper will probably pertain to human development more generally, and will require that you think creatively about how to extend those findings to the population and hypothesis you are writing about.

Instructions: In this paper, you are asked to put forth your hypothesis for how the current global health situation might affect a specific aspect of human development at a specific age. In the paper, you should do the following:

1) Identify a specific age range that you wish to explore. This age range should be described in your paper in years (for example, 10- to 12-year-olds; 65- to 69-year-olds) or in months (for example, 2- to 4-month-olds).

• If necessary for your topic, identify other specific demographics concerning the group you are writing about. For example, you may wish to specify that your hypothesis relates to a specific gender, ethnicity, language group, etc.

2) Identify a general aspect of human development that you will explore in your paper, choosing from the list below, and then narrow that topic down to a specific behaviour/process that you choose.

• Social development/social cognition
• Cognitive development
• Language development
• Moral development
• Identity and/or gender development
• Perceptual and/or motor development

1. 3) Briefly summarize, using the textbook and at least one additional scholarly source, some aspects of what we already know about the behaviour or process that you are writing about. These characteristics should pertain to your hypothesis (see #4 below).
2. 4) Make a hypothesis for how some aspect of the current global health situation might affect the behaviour/process that you are studying. This hypothesis should be specific. You should describe how you think that specific characteristics of the developmental behaviour/process might change because of the current situation. Some examples of hypotheses are as follows. Please don’t use these exact hypotheses: they are just examples!
   • “Due to isolation and a reduction in their social interactions outside the home, children 3 to 5 years of age will experience a delay in their acquisition of a fully working theory of mind.”
   • “With increased parental involvement, adolescents aged 15 to 17 living through the pandemic will engage in higher levels of identity foreclosure than individuals of the same age have done historically.”
   • “With increased reliance on social media and video streaming for communication, older adults in their late 70s will experience an expansion of their social networks.”
3. 5) Support your hypothesis using information from at least one additional scholarly source. You may return to the source you used in #3 above if you wish and if it is pertinent, but you must still cite at least one more paper here. Again, you may cite non- scholarly sources, too (such as government data or news sites), but you must cite at least one additional scholarly source.

Notes about formatting and other common queries:

• You must include in-text citations for any external work that you cite, and you must include a reference list at the end of your document. These should both follow APA formatting (7th edition). For more information about APA formatting for citations, visit the Online Writing Lab at Purdue University, and navigate to the section on Research and Citation (https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html). o OtheraspectsofAPAformatting(e.g.,anabstract,titlepage,etc.arenot necessary for this paper).
• Your paper should be approximately 1200 words in length. peerScholar counts the number of words in your composition, and papers that are more than 200 words above or below this limit will be penalized. o Thein-textcitationsandreferencelistdocounttowardthislimit,sotheword count that peerScholar produces for you is the word count that your TAs will use to mark your paper. Note that this is not a very long paper, so you may find it more challenging to be concise rather than to write enough. Your peers may help you in finding places to cut words.

• Scholarly sources (at least two):
o Articlesinpeer-reviewedjournalsarescholarlysources.Thesecanbefound

online using the University of Toronto Library system. A good place to start looking for articles that discuss this topic might be Google Scholar, but you will have better luck getting access by using the Library’s search feature. The Library also subscribes to a database called PsycINFO that can help you find sources.

o Chaptersinscientificbooksarescholarlysources.Thesecanoftenbefound online through the Library as well.

o Scholarly sources do not include government data sets, blogs, websites (other than those used to find journals or books), news media, social media, the textbook, or lecture slides. You may use non-scholarly sources in your paper if you wish, but they do not count toward your requirements for using scholarly sources as described above.

• Be extremely careful about plagiarism. Copying and pasting information from sources is never a good idea, even if you think you will go back later and correct it. Every term in this course students are referred to the University’s Academic Integrity office for plagiarism, either by using former students’ work or by copying material from online sources. Ignorance of the rules is not an excuse for plagiarism. Please be very careful about citing sources and about phrasing material in your own words.
• Mechanics and grammar will be considered by the TAs when marking the paper. If you are concerned about your writing skills, you should consider visiting the Writing Centre or UTSC English Language Development Support. o https://utsc.utoronto.ca/twc/
  o https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/eld/writing