Felix is Data

Yesterday was an exciting day for us.  First off, Felix got to visit me at my workplace (and meet lots and lots of my coworkers).  While there, he ate an entire fresh banana.  I really didn't think that he had the stomach room for that, but I was wrong.  After the visit, we went to his appointment at the UW Infant Learning Lab.  I contacted them a while ago to see if they needed a test subject.  The whole process of infant learning amazes me, so I hoped Felix would be able to help them figure out how babies' brains work.  The study he participated in was a vision study.  We went into a special, small, soundproof room.  I put Felix in a car set in front of a TV screen with a video camera on top.  The camera had special eye-tracking software that could tell where Felix was looking.  I was given a pair of sunglasses that blocked me from seeing anything (the camera would have picked up my eye movements, too).  According to the researcher (since I couldn't see it), an image was shown rotating to each corner of the screen at a set interval (long-short-long-short).  They wanted to see if he would figure out the pattern and timing, then be able to figure out where the image was supposed to be if he looked away.  I have no idea how he did, but at least they have more data for their study.  I do know he looked at me a fair bit, maybe to see what I thought of the image, or trying to figure out why I was wearing such huge black glasses.  Pretty cool.  He also got a little t-shirt for his participation.  :o)

Felix: 9 mos