Tuesday, July 12, 2016

The Little Things: Week 1 Day 2

Casually Van Goghing to fill up my
water bottle
It has only been two days of classes, but in some ways it feels like I have been here for months. There is so much information to absorb all at once, and while I am loving it I am also exhausted by it! Today I woke up just in time to grab breakfast before walking over to my classroom. This morning I did the walk on my own, and it was quite a nice way to get some time to think and just take in the sights. With the directions more familiar I noticed more of the little details that I hadn't really noticed before, like the artwork on the walls of the hallways.

We spent the first part of class today talking about our homework article last night about the Other Race Effect (ORE), which explains why adults have difficulty differentiating the faces of individuals outside of their own race. The paper detailed an experiment done on Caucasian infants which suggested that the ORE develops in children as early as three months old as their experiences with the faces around them gradually narrows their face-processing system to the race they are most exposed to. This concept was fascinating to me, since it shows the effects of lack of exposure to diversity in a whole new light. The paper itself was also an excellent example of how an official experimental write-up should look, and was eye opening (I suppose literally, since the experiment used the eye movement of infants to infer attention and recognition) as to how much thought and how many controls go into an official research experiment.

Excitement or maniacal genius? The world may
never know
The rest of our class was dedicated to infant development, from conception to the first few years after birth. There were son many cute pictures and videos of babies and they were all SO CUTE. We watched videos of our professors kids learning to walk and watched a documentary about a longitudinal study of four children from different countries around the world: The United States, Japan, Mongolia, and Namibia. The diversity of beliefs and techniques for child rearing is astounding. Seeing all of the little ones (especially one particular video of our professors baby crawling backwards and almost getting stuck under a couch) reminded me of when my littlest sister was that age and would do the same thing.

We are already divided into groups for our final project, and met with Kate and our TA Marjorie to help narrow down topics. I love the people I am working with and am excited to see where this project goes!






1 comment:

  1. Art work on the walls. Love it. Van Gogh by the water. Perfect. Your class sounds engaging, packed with useable information and stimulating. So glad to hear. Glad you made breakfast. Lol. Solitary time is important in college. Hugs and kisses.

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