advancing science

The Infant Research Lab here at Brown is studying how babies acquire language. They called to see if we'd be willing to participate in their study since Aiden is approaching the one year mark and they need at least 30 one year olds in each sample. They were going to have him listen to the letter 'P' sounds and they would record his eye movements on a video camera. The only trick he had to perform was to sit nicely in my lap for a couple minutes. He screetched when he was getting bored and he really wanted my headphones, but other than that he did really seem to listen at the moments when they wanted to get his attention. I had music playing on my headphones so I couldn't hear, but he definitely payed really close attention at certain points. The screen would flash with a little yellow dot and then a big checkboard pattern would show up while they played the noises. She said they were trying to test whether they could tell the difference between the different letter noises by how long he paid attention to the screen. Aiden was so excited by some of the noises he would point and bounce in my lap. When we were done he was happy to play at their train table while the researcher debriefed us. They then opened this big cabinet full of new toys and he got to pick one out! He ended up helping science and earning a new toy alligator.... I was pretty close to picking out a new tshirt for him only because it said he had earned his "honorary doctorate" from the infant research lab, but I took a photo of it instead. But unfortunately, J's iphone ate it - So here is Aiden's first official honorary doctorate... We'll have to go back another time for our honorary doctorate tshirt or at least a better photo: