Child Study

I took Connell to the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota today to be part of a study. Apparently we are still in their database from the last one he was involved in back in March of 2005 and so since he fit the age group for this new study, they called us to participate. Ray took the day off to stay with Liam.

The study was related to memory and cognition and processing information. They are testing all ages (up through old adults) and the lady conducting the study said that at age 4, Connell is one of the youngest participants. They spent about 60-70 minutes with him doing about 5-6 different activities mostly on a computer. He had to remember items from screen to screen, classify things and also had to put things into order. When he saw only 2 or 3 items, it wasn't too challenging for him. When it started to get into 5 or more items, it was very difficult to not only remember what they all were, but also to group them into fruits or animals and from smallest to largest. Wow! My head was spinning watching everything. You could tell that he was figuring out ways to make each activity easier as they progressed. He had a ball doing it, was sad when it was over and we left with a $20. Target gift card and a box of sidewalk chalk to make our time worthwhile. On the way back from the U, we had the chance to ride over the brand new bridge that opened last week (for those of you out of our area, it is the one that replaced the bridge that collapsed tragically into the Mississippi River back on August 1st, 2007).