blinded with science

yesterday hannah and i took part in a research study, and i am so ridiculously excited about this, i cannot even tell you. we signed up a couple months ago at one of the universities near us and i had been anxiously waiting for them to contact us to participate. i firmly believe in actively participating in research when i can, and the brain (and our bodies) is one of those things that juust absolutely fascinates me. when i was a baby, my mother and i participated in a study about infant massage, so i guess it's just in my genes.

brian was very concerned that i would be subjecting hannah to needles or strange drugs and things like that. i reassured him that i would never allow anything like that to happen to her, and that ethically, researchers can't do things like that to babies because they cannot give informed consent. (i think. right?)

we actually participated in two studies yesterday. the first study was testing her short-term memory. she sat on my lap in front of two computer screens with different colored dots on them. on one screen the dots were stationary, and the other the dots were moving around. in theory, she would look at both screens to see the dots, and then if she had stored them in her short-term memory, she would look at the screen with the moving dots longer because it is more interesting than the stationary dots (which were already in her memory).

the second study tested her ability to categorize objects. we sat in front of a television screen and she was shown lots of pictures of cats. big cats, little cats, fluffy cats, orange cats, white cats, you name it. this was to help her make the category "cats." then she was shown a picture of a cat and a dog. in theory, if she had made the category "cats" and was able to differentiate between cats and dogs, then she would look at the picture of the dog longer, because it was new and interesting.

they did tell me that she looked at the moving dots longer. (well, OF COURSE SHE DID. she's a genius. what else would you expect?) they did not tell me what she did on the cats and dogs test and i forgot to ask, which is really a bummer because she is currently going through the developmental stage where she realizes that things are different and the same and begins to categorize objects.

brian was very relieved when i told him how everything went and what she did at the center. we were also kindly given an age-appropriate toy for our trouble, which made it all worthwhile to him. silly man!

we are still on their list, if they need more volunteers for future studies. i really hope they do, because we had a lot of fun doing this, and it is neat to know that hannah (and me, indirectly) contributed to our understanding of how the mind develops and works. if you have a research university close to you and a young baby, i encourage you to participate in any studies they may have as well!