<> Baby Scientist <>

My girls are now both officially scientists ... well, they've participated in child development studies for Duke University. I imagine Duke University receives a list of babies who receive birth certificates in the surrounding counties, and they contact these bubbly new parents. 

When Carissa was a baby, we were asked to participate in their study; and Kathryn was also just invited. They were working on the same study both times, but the activity was slightly different.

They are conducting a study to see what babies understand about quantity before they know numbers or how to count etc. (For example, if you put 10 cheerios in one pile and 3 in a different pile, will infants go for the one with more? etc)

With Carissa, she sat in a high chair in front of a computer screen. The screen flashed different sizes and numbers of little dots. They video taped to see if she showed any interest in the ones with more dots etc.

     The results ... who knows. She got fussy haha.

With Kathryn, she also sat in a high chair (and ended up in my lap when she got antsy and kept trying to turn and get me). But they had three screens in front of her (one directly in front of her, and one to the left and one to the right). The first "test" they had a constant number of dots on one screen, while the other screen changed quantities and the second test they had cats and mice - one screen had the same number of mice and cats, while the other changed the ratio between the two etc. The theory behind this is that if she recognized different quantities, she might pay more attention to the one changing quantities, etc. Every minute there would be a little break, and during this break there was a color pinwheel that spun on the screen directly in front of her. She loved that pinwheel. She watched it until it went away and the other screens lit up. She looked at one screen, then the other, back to the first, and decided to play with the chair or talk, and look around - but every time that pinwheel came back on, she stopped and stared at it, and repeated her process of checking out each screen. Apparently the dots, mice, and cats were boring because she looked at them for a second and played with something else.

I really don't know if my girls contributed to their study in any concrete way, but they received little certificates saying that are baby scientists.It was kind of neat to let them take part in a study for educational purposes. :)