Baby Experimentation

A lot of parents talk about how they like to "experiment" on their children. Like seeing if they remember a toy that's put out of view. Or asking them which glass has more in it, the tall skinny one or the short fat one. But here at the Anderson household, we take it one step further! Today's post is brought you by guest blogger, Andrea, as she was the one to actually take Megan to the experiment. Enjoy!

- Shawn


I got a postcard in the mail a couple months after Megan was born asking me if Megan would ever want to be in a study at the U of M. I sent it back saying in my head, "Sure why not!". And last week they called me. They basically explained it was a visual recognition experiment.

I got there much earlier then I had anticipated because I wasn't familiar with the traffic flow around the campus. I was led into the building by a high school kid that was doing his internship, he said it was his second day there. He took me into a room with a collage age student named Katie actually conducting the experiment. They made some small talk, and I was taken behind a curtain to see what Megan would be seeing after signing a release form. Basically it showed a yellow duck moving back and forth on a computer screen on a white background. And then the second one showed the same duck in the same proportions, only now it looked like it was going down a hallway. This gave visual impression that the duck was getting smaller, but it wasn't. The third one was a variation of that. Basically they were trying to test whether infants can perceive a level of 3-dimensionality from a 2-dimensial drawing.

They had Megan sit on my lap, but made me wear some glasses so that I couldn't see anything. They didn't want Megan picking up on any visual cues from me. They asked me if Megan watched much TV and I said ya...like all the time. I said she was really starting to pay attention to the screen now so we couldn't watch Sin City anymore. Then just like that, the test was over. More small talk ensued and they gave me a coupon for a free portrait sitting at JC Penney and that was it. Now I can always tell Megan she was in an experiment at the U of M!

Shawn here again... I also wanted to post a Megan tooth update. There is a crazy explosion of teeth coming in on the top. She has 4 teeth all coming in at once that we can see. Here is a close up image...