Monday, August 4, 2008

Early Childhood Cognition Lab Volunteer

Andy is volunteered to be a study participant at ECCL at UW last Monday (7/28). The study asks infants to watch adults playing with objects and tries to understand how infants learn actions.

He sits in my lap in front of a desk that has two toys, a red car and a green frog. He watches an adult repeatedly acting out a scene of picking up the red car. He focuses intensely for the first couple of times. Then his focus time drops drastically and he squirms and moves around quickly when the same act is repeated; this indicates that he has learned the event.

He is then moved to a new environment and watches the similar act of the same adult picking up a toy, except this time the adult picks up the green frog some of the times. The camera again tracks his eye focus time. In this series, the first act holds his attention long again (18 seconds), indicating it is viewed as a new event. Then the focus time quickly drops to about 5 seconds in the succeeding acts indicating he understands the act.

The last part of the experiment takes him back to the initial setting and he is placed in front of the two toys. The study poses the question of whether watching someone having preference influences baby's choice of action. And guess what is Andy's response?

At ECCL waiting room. So many toys...

Earns a Jack-in-the-box toy for devoting himself to a scientific experiment.


He picks up the green frog. And then he picks up the red car too with the other hand. So I guess he has his own mind at this age already.

After I write all this, I discover an official description here under the "Understanding Others' Preference" study.

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