Weird Science

Today, we donated you to science and it was fun! You and I spent an hour today at the Bauer Memory Lab at Emory (aka Memory at Emory) and walked out perfectly contented lab-rats.

First, they strapped a contraption to your head that emitted gentle puffs of air around the area of your eye. For about ten minutes you watched one of the researchers play with puppets and every so often a little chime would ring and a puff of air would cause you to blink. There were supposed to be three electrodes strapped to your head to measure the blink reflex but you pulled two of the three electrodes off within the first ten seconds. Sometimes, the chime would ring and no puff of air followed, the researchers filmed you to see if you still blinked. I have no idea how you performed because I was too busy watching the puppets and trying to keep you from eating the electrodes.

The second test was a lot more fun and didn't involved puffs of air, electrodes or chimes. The researcher brought out two groups of toys. The first was a piece of wood and a plastic turtle. You were allowed to play with the toys however you wanted to for two minutes and then the researcher showed you that the piece of wood actually bent in half to make a ramp and the turtle could slide down the ramp. She showed you this trick twice and didn't let you touch it again. Then she brought out the second set of toys which looked like a minature gymnastics bar, a wooden hammer and a small curved piece of plastic. You were free to play with them for them for two minutes and then the researcher showed you how to "bang the gong" by hanging the plastic piece over the gym bar and then banging it with the hammer. Then we went to the floor and played with a basket full of toys for ten minutes.

When we returned to the test site you got a chance to show those folks what you'd learned. Out came the turtle and the wood. You went right to work making the slide and then took the turtle and moved it up and down the slide. Then you chewed on the turtle for what was left of your two minutes. The gong was a lot harder; you took the hammer and banged on everything, even the place where the gong should have been hanging but you never even glanced at the piece of wood that needed to hang on the bar. Then you chewed the hammer for what was left of your two minutes.

Just think, thanks to you, the world will better understand infant memory. Or at the very least we'll better understand that turtles belong on slides.