lab rat.

a few weeks ago, i got a letter in the mail from the university of texas.  in it, they said that the hospital where i delivered emme (i think all hospitals) released public records about live births, and they indicated that i had a child between the ages of 6-7 months.  this was true.  they asked if we would be interested in letting emme participate in a research study for the university, and then went on to give a basic overview of the process and whatnot.  i thought it sounded really interesting and fun for emme to do.  maybe that sounds crazy, but i think research into social behavior is super important and i knew everything was non-invasive and non-traumatic.  so, saturday morning, we headed over to UT.  two nice girls came out to the car to meet us and they played with emme while i filled out the permissions forms, etc. 

we headed back into a room where there were even MORE toys for the little miss to enjoy while they put the cap on her head.  she could have cared less - it was so funny how un-phased she was by the whole thing.  she just really wanted to hang out with this bouncy frog they had.  anyway...they had a huge screen in front of emme and i sat next to her in a high chair and they played images of two different faces on the screen for her.  they did about 11 repetitions per round and about 9-10 rounds total, so the whole affair was maybe 8 minutes long?  she did great!  she focused on the screen and the researchers said they were able to get some really great readings from emme's brain.  

as we were leaving, we got a little t-shirt for ek and they got to tell me more information about the study (they couldn't explain much before because of bias and influence from the parent).  this particular study was about attractiveness bias - the tendency for people to believe/listen to people that are attractive more than people that are not.  they are trying to determine if this is a learned behaviour (based on media/cultural influences, etc), or if it's something innate - like facial symmetry and the golden ratio and all that foster a tendency towards those people more than towards people who don't have those physical qualities.  their goal is to figure out how to combat attractiveness bias based on their findings.  i thought it was super interesting and not something i would have ever given a whole lot of thought to.  

anyway....here are some before and during pics of our little lab rat!

p.s. justin wanted me to post these pictures and say that they wanted to test our baby because she's sooooo advanced (a running joke at our house).  i forgot to mention that she's fluent in mandarin and knows basic calculus already....