Bubba Goes To College

Today we went to the University of Minnesota so Tyler could participate in a study of Attention & Learning in Infancy. The purpose of the study is to explore the role of attention in everyday learning. Research has shown that infants can learn about patterns of objects or events that occur together because they are so sensitive to regularities in their surroundings. They are trying to discover if focused attention is necessary for this type of unintentional learning.

Tyler took to the two girls running the experiement right away. As soon as he saw them he flashed his biggest smile and he kept talking to them the whole time they were explaining their research. The experiment itself was pretty quick. Tyler had to sit on my lap facing a huge computer monitor. They turned off the lights and showed a "movie" of colorful shapes and symbols with some sounds. Below the monitor was a video camera recording Tyler's eye movements so they could determine which objects Tyler found most interesting and how long he looked at them. The movie was on a loop, set to replay over and over again. The two girls told me they'd play it until he got fussy, which for some babies is pretty quick. Tyler sat there like a star pupil, never squirming or making a peep. Finally they had to shut it down on their own, saying no baby had ever made it through that many loops. A+ for Tyler! As a thank you for his hard work they gave Tyler a University of Minnesota hat. The girls were very nice so we didn't mention that our loyalities lie elsewere; we just politely took the hat (although he doesn't look very happy about being photographed with it!).