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study subject dorkitude
As I have noted with certain friends lately, I am a complete dork when it comes to helping people out with academic studies. I love to be a test subject. I love to help science. Even if they make me drink some kind of thing to see if I am a supertaster (I am. If you aren't, it tastes like water. If you are, it is the yuckiest thing you can imagine. They didn't warn me.)
This week we went to Chapel Hill on Tuesday afternoon so Casper could be a test subject for a study about memory and language acquisition in young children. We're going again this afternoon, since they want to see if "children play games the same way on different occasions." Aside from the excitement of the bus + walk and return (life is so much more interesting, if time consuming, when you don't drive) it was pretty neat. We were all in a little room: the graduate student doing the study observing in the back, an undergrad who was interacting with Casper (bright, perky, Casper really seemed to like her), me in a chair filling out a very long questionnaire about words Casper uses, and Casper.
The questionnaire was hard - 6 or 8 pages of lists of different words organized by type (body parts, verbs) and then some more complex questions about types of sentences, grammatical mistakes, verb forms used. I was trying to be very scrupulous and only tick words I was sure Casper has actually said, which was reasonably easy with nouns but got harder and harder (also I was getting tired after half an hour of this and couldn't remember). Of course, after the study she immediately used at least 3 of the words I had debated over and decided she didn't say. I wonder how accurate a parent survey of a child's language skills is? I was trying so hard and felt I was not being very accurate. I wonder if you'd get more of a sense of a child's ability from a 10-minute tape?
While I was puzzling over whether Casper says motorcycle, bicycle and tricycle (yes to all 3), Casper did memory games with the perky undergrad. PUG would hide a toy in a box and Casper would find it. About half the games were variations on this theme, generally with some counting between the hiding and the finding. The other games were about repeating words or sounds that PUG said, or identifying images in pictures. Casper was ADORABLE - very excited about the whole idea, and wiggly, and grinning her head off. During the counting parts she could hardly sit still she was so excited. She was also a little shy, and any time she was asked to speak she was almost inaudible - she'd whisper or even just mouth the words, often with her hands in front of her mouth. They couldn't convince her to talk louder (they were taping her, so I think they wanted to have the video reflect that she was really speaking - if you were there you could tell she was saying the words they asked for). Of course, as soon as they were done she started talked to me at a normal voice level.
She got to choose a toy as a present and chose a Little People set, which made sense because we just took the larger section of the Little People village we were given out of the basement last weekend (after Casper went around saying, "There's no good toys." !! We are awash in toys!) We stopped for ice cream on the way to the bus home, and Casper got kind of tired and floppy on the bus, but overall held up to a fairly grueling afternoon pretty well.
On the whole, though, studies taking place in Chapel Hill will probably get a no from me in the future - it's just too much hassle.
This week we went to Chapel Hill on Tuesday afternoon so Casper could be a test subject for a study about memory and language acquisition in young children. We're going again this afternoon, since they want to see if "children play games the same way on different occasions." Aside from the excitement of the bus + walk and return (life is so much more interesting, if time consuming, when you don't drive) it was pretty neat. We were all in a little room: the graduate student doing the study observing in the back, an undergrad who was interacting with Casper (bright, perky, Casper really seemed to like her), me in a chair filling out a very long questionnaire about words Casper uses, and Casper.
The questionnaire was hard - 6 or 8 pages of lists of different words organized by type (body parts, verbs) and then some more complex questions about types of sentences, grammatical mistakes, verb forms used. I was trying to be very scrupulous and only tick words I was sure Casper has actually said, which was reasonably easy with nouns but got harder and harder (also I was getting tired after half an hour of this and couldn't remember). Of course, after the study she immediately used at least 3 of the words I had debated over and decided she didn't say. I wonder how accurate a parent survey of a child's language skills is? I was trying so hard and felt I was not being very accurate. I wonder if you'd get more of a sense of a child's ability from a 10-minute tape?
While I was puzzling over whether Casper says motorcycle, bicycle and tricycle (yes to all 3), Casper did memory games with the perky undergrad. PUG would hide a toy in a box and Casper would find it. About half the games were variations on this theme, generally with some counting between the hiding and the finding. The other games were about repeating words or sounds that PUG said, or identifying images in pictures. Casper was ADORABLE - very excited about the whole idea, and wiggly, and grinning her head off. During the counting parts she could hardly sit still she was so excited. She was also a little shy, and any time she was asked to speak she was almost inaudible - she'd whisper or even just mouth the words, often with her hands in front of her mouth. They couldn't convince her to talk louder (they were taping her, so I think they wanted to have the video reflect that she was really speaking - if you were there you could tell she was saying the words they asked for). Of course, as soon as they were done she started talked to me at a normal voice level.
She got to choose a toy as a present and chose a Little People set, which made sense because we just took the larger section of the Little People village we were given out of the basement last weekend (after Casper went around saying, "There's no good toys." !! We are awash in toys!) We stopped for ice cream on the way to the bus home, and Casper got kind of tired and floppy on the bus, but overall held up to a fairly grueling afternoon pretty well.
On the whole, though, studies taking place in Chapel Hill will probably get a no from me in the future - it's just too much hassle.
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