Lab Rats

I have no shame, I am proud to admit that I subject my children to the pursuit of science and they are indeed official Lab rats, and I love it!!!

When Sariah was born they had me fill out a card with her information that would then be given to UW and would allow them to contact me in the future if her stats met those that they were looking for to participat in learning studies.

Sure enough when she was about nine months old they called and asked if she could participate in a study that looked at how children learned. More specifically they would perform an action with a toy and then ask the child to perform it. After a few of those they would do the action again and then another observer would make an exagerated face and comment "That is so infuriating. I do not like it when you do that!" or some other like comment. The leader would then ask the child to again perform the action, the one they had just been chastised for doing by the observer. During the time the observer would either be watching the child or reading a magazine and not paying attention to the child. They were looking to see whether the child would still perform the action after having witnessed another person being chastised, and if it would make a difference if the observer was looking or not.

They reimbursed parking, gave her a little car toy and this cool shirt.

When Tristan was about five months they asked us to participate in a study that was trying to see what decible infants heard at. It was fascinating but too long to describe here.

While at that study I saw an add looking for 8-12 year olds to participate in a language study so I signed Michael and Seri up. They had a great time. It involved two sessions. One where they did a lot of language testing and listening and then another were they were fitted with a suction cup helmet that read their brain waves when responding to questions involving language. For these the children were paid $20.00 each visit.

Tristan then participated in one out of three sessions for a plagiocephaly study. He is a control subject in this study as he does not have plagiocephaly (a misshapen head in which the back of the head is often flat to an unusual degree). He had 3D pictures of his head taken and we were given a CD with a copy of the photos, and he worked with an observer for about an hour on different things. He recieved a $100.00 check. He will be tested again in Oct. (at 18 months) and then once more when he is three.

Recently he participated in the same learning study that Sariah did. It was so interesting to see how the two children responded differently.

Maybe it is my passion for Psychology, but I love the fact that the children have this oppurtunity. That it enables me to teach my children about the scientific process through real world experience which will insure they learn it better. We talk about methods, hypothesis, controls and just about everything else and they know it because they were a part of it. No better learning than that.

Here's to science!!!