May 5, 2000 - Friday
Harry paid another visit to the Infant Lab today to help students learn more about how babies process the world around them. I'm fascinated by how things work, including Harry, so this is more than just a fun distraction for him in the morning. Today's test was designed to learn whether 4 1/2 to 5 month old babies understood enough about their environment to be perplexed by some non-conforming or "magic" occurrence. To do so, subjects were shown a cylinder and a cup just big enough for the lower half of the cylinder to fit in. The objects were shown separate and then put together and moved laterally as a unit. The magic occurred when the trick cylinder, while inside the cup, is mysteriously split in half so that the top part of the cylinder goes in one direction and the cup, with the rest of the cylinder, goes in the opposite direction. There was a bar going across the stage area at the height of the split so that the baby's imagination had to fill in the rest and to mask the gimmicky.

Since this study was nearing an end and Harry was one of the last babies who will be involved, the students were able to tell me that most babies his age do spend more time looking at the "magic" than the non-magic, indicating their intrigue. They were not really able to say whether Harry was intrigued because they were more concerned with testing procedures during the experiment itself and will need to watch the videotape to accurately evaluate Harry's performance. And, I don't know because, although Harry was sitting on my lap for the tests, I was told to close my eyes as to not affect Harry.

Two things I was able to observe were Harry's interest in a video camera on a tripod in the corner of the room that eventually had to be removed before he would paid attention and, I'm proud of this one for some reason, he spent a lot of time looking at how they lifted the screen in front of the stage. It was a rectangle foam board attached to strings. When they pulled the strings the foam went way up and so did Harry's eyes, craning his head back to see. Maybe it was just the movement for Harry, but I did the same thing, looking at the strings, the pulleys, and board to see how everything was attached.


Comments, opinions?