Study Participant at UCSD

Because I read and follow research on young children as part of my job, I see it as extra important that we give back to science and research (as long as it is in a non-evasive and low risk way!)
I have taken Westley to do a couple studies now at the research labs at UCSD.
One was an infant vision study, and another he did when he was about 2 years old. 


Here is what today's experiment was about:

Researchers divided the subjects into two groups.  One group of subjects will be told a
white lie before testing starts, and the other group will not. They wanted to learn
learn whether telling white lies to a child has an effect on whether or not
they choose to engage in truth-telling behaviors. (Westley was in the group that was told the white lie)

The first part of the session involves Westley playing a guessing game with
the experimenter.  The experimenter had  Westley guess the names of
three commercially popular toys from the sounds or phrases the characters
say.  On the last toy, the experimenter left the room, saying she
needs to take a phone call.  She put out the toy before she
left the room, and told Westley not to peek at the toy that is behind
them.  The experimenter  came back into the room after one minute and
asked Westley whether they peeked or not. (Westley did peek after about 30 seconds, and openly admitted to peeking).

The second part of the session was the brain wave portion. It involved Westley wearing a mesh cap that looks like a
swimmer's cap that had 32 discs sewn into it.  This cap reads the natural
brain activity that Westley gives off.  While wearing the cap Westley saw a set of pictures of the three toys from the first part
of the session.  They were looking to see how his brain activity differs between
the seeing the toy that he could have peeked at and one of the toys he could
not have. 


Westley had a fun time, he got to play with about 4 college aged girls who thought he was funny and adorable ;)
He did not enjoy the time it took to get the cap on right, as each electrode disc and to be filled with saline solution and rotated just properly on his head (the dum dum helped ease the bordom of that) but he was a great sport through the entire process.