Last week, Lauren participated in another study at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain, Infant Cognition Lab. It was her third time to participate. This time, she was part of a new study comparing the development of babies with Fragile X Syndrome and Down Syndrome. Lauren is part of the control group of typically developing babies.
The tests/activities were simple. She sat on my lap looking at a TV Screen while they tracked her eyes with an infrared eye-tracking do-hickey that showed what part of the screen she was looking at. They were trying to detect how well she could notice movement in her peripheral vision. There was an attention getting picture in the center (like a moving circle or spinning pinwheel) and then some very faintly visible wavy lines appeared near the left and right edges of the screen. They wanted to track how soon she noticed them and how close to the center they had to be before her pupils moved to look at them.
The second test involved looking at stationary faces in her peripheral vision. Faces on one side of the screen were upright, the faces on the other side were upside down, warped, or had eyes/ears/nose/mouth scrambled up. They were trying to see how well she recognized the upright faces depending on the how close to the center they were positioned. As the faces got closer to the center of the screen, she recognized the upright faces right away and focused on them faster and longer. As the faces got further and further apart, it took her a while to distinguish between scrambled up face and upright face.
After the tests, they let us view the results and replayed the videos with the eye-tracking . There were red dots on the screen that represented where she was looking . It was neat to see how she looked back and forth between them until she finally recognized the upright face and focused her attention on it.
The researcher explained that babies with Fragile X syndrome have trouble noticing movement in their peripheral vision but don't seem to have problems with stationary things in the periphery. It's very interesting stuff. If you want to read more about this study, you can check it out by clicking here.
The tests/activities were simple. She sat on my lap looking at a TV Screen while they tracked her eyes with an infrared eye-tracking do-hickey that showed what part of the screen she was looking at. They were trying to detect how well she could notice movement in her peripheral vision. There was an attention getting picture in the center (like a moving circle or spinning pinwheel) and then some very faintly visible wavy lines appeared near the left and right edges of the screen. They wanted to track how soon she noticed them and how close to the center they had to be before her pupils moved to look at them.
The second test involved looking at stationary faces in her peripheral vision. Faces on one side of the screen were upright, the faces on the other side were upside down, warped, or had eyes/ears/nose/mouth scrambled up. They were trying to see how well she recognized the upright faces depending on the how close to the center they were positioned. As the faces got closer to the center of the screen, she recognized the upright faces right away and focused on them faster and longer. As the faces got further and further apart, it took her a while to distinguish between scrambled up face and upright face.
After the tests, they let us view the results and replayed the videos with the eye-tracking . There were red dots on the screen that represented where she was looking . It was neat to see how she looked back and forth between them until she finally recognized the upright face and focused her attention on it.
The researcher explained that babies with Fragile X syndrome have trouble noticing movement in their peripheral vision but don't seem to have problems with stationary things in the periphery. It's very interesting stuff. If you want to read more about this study, you can check it out by clicking here.
The tests only took about ten minutes and afterwards we paid a visit to my lab and said hello to everyone in the office.
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