I arrived at Stanford last week on July the 15th and the weather is great in California. I talked to and met my PI, Professor Gweon and our lab manager, Mika on the first day and briefly talked about what I hoped to accomplish in my next six weeks. There are four other people who worked in the same room with me. Two of them are Stanford undergrads, one is Wellesley undergrad and another one is a high intern as well. They are all very nice and welcomed me to the lab.
On the first couple days, I helped the lab members with their ongoing block project and made blocks. Mika and Grace explained the project to me. This project is related to rarity. Basically, the project is trying to figure out whether children between the age of two to five have a preferences on things that are rare. Two different colors red and green blocks are shown to children and children are asked which block they want to play with. Because adults tend to choose something rare over common, researchers are trying to figure out whether infants have the basic instincts to choose the rare one as well. Meanwhile, I learnt how to code videos and helped coding videos for VPT (that I collect data for the rest of the summer) on the first couple days. Mika and my mentor Xuan explained to me once again what my project is about and I realized some of my understandings before were wrong and I had a more thorough understanding after watching the videos.
In order to make undergrads and high school interns learn more about psychology, my lab assigned papers for us to read and held reading group every week. This week, the reading group topic is preferences. In addition, there is a lab meeting every week for lab members to present ongoing projects.
In terms of living location, I lived in a graduate student dorm which is 20 minutes walking distance from my lab, which is in Main Quad Jordan hall. Since it is not a far walk, I walked to campus every day instead of biking.
It's been a great week and looking forward to next week. :)
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