"I was a young scientist"

That's what Ethan's new bucket says. He recieved it as a thank you after he participated in two behavioral studies this morning. (To Ethan this meant getting to play with new toys.)

We started with an imitation study. The first toy was a rain-stick that Ethan didn't want to turn over like they showed him because you could make the noise by shaking it, and that was more fun. The second was two blocks covered in pictures. The prompters were trying to get Ethan to match two pictures on the blocks, but Ethan would just grab them, stack them, and look around like "I did it. What next?" After that, they moved on to toys that had been specifically built for these studies. (Boxes with a knob or button that made something happen.) The two prompters would each bring out a different toy. They would show Ethan how to use each one, and then give him a duplicate of one of the toys. I think the objective was that he imitate the correct motions to make the toy 'work'. He did really well!

The second study was about handedness. Ethan is definiatly a righty. They started by putting toys one at a time directly in front of him and recording which hand he used to grab them. Then, using the toys he liked most and that took the most coordination to use, they began putting them on one side or the other. By the end, the prompter was putting all the toys to Ethan's left. Ethan would grab them with his left hand and then pass them to his right to use them. They then wanted to put a sock over Ethan's right hand, but he would have none of it, so we were done. I discovered that Ethan LOVED putting little pegs in the holes in a board. We will definiatly get something like that for him to play with at home.

This study was a little strange for me. It was run by college students who seemed so young, but really aren't that much younger than me. And I couldn't really talk to Ethan at all during the process. He sat in a chair attached to the table and I sat in a chair behind him. When he turned to me, I could reassure him and tell him he did a good job, but I couldn't give any type of instructions.

All in all, it was fun. Only 30 min and I felt like we were contributing something to the world. If they have another study that Ethan qualifies for (mostly he just has to be ther right age), we will definiatly go!