Amy Qian #2: First time testing!

This week I got to go with Grace and Mika to test in a local museum at Stanford. It was a really interesting experience. Our lab has a testing room in the local museum and we go to the museum and look for children of the right age and collect data from them by playing lab designed games. 

For the first couple times in the museum, I was piloting for Grace and Mika and did not get to the actual testing part myself.  Before testing, researchers need to recruit children and give parents consent forms. Mika sent me an powerpoint before hands on what kind of problems I would encounter during the recruiting and consenting process and how I should answer them. Since the experiments require video tape or audio tape, we need to be really careful in making sure parents  are okay with that. 

I got to test on my own project (VPT) on the third time going to the museum. Basically, in the experiment, the children are presented with a puppet show called Emma and her friends (laptop in a fancy box to create a feeling that this is a magic show). And then, the children are shown with two shows: 1. There is an orange on the table and Emma asks what fruit that is. The guy on the left says it is a banana and the guy on the right says it is an orange. 2. There is a number 6(from Emma's perspective) on the table. Based on different conditions, Emma either knows or doesn't know about the number. Then she asks what the number is. The guy on the right says either 6 or 9 and the guy on the left says the other. Then, we ask children couple questions such as "who did a better job answering Emma's question" The game takes about five minutes 

It was really awkward at first because we had to go up to parents and asked them if they were willing to let the children play games with us. Sometimes, even when parents agreed to participate, children rejected us. 

The first day of my experiment went well overall. I coded the videos and sent the videos to my mentor. My mentor gave me suggestions on my voice tone since we have to be careful when we worked with kids.  

We didn't have lab meetings and reading group this week because some lab members went to LA for a convention. 

Also, on the weekend, my friends and I went to a concert together at Stanford! Another great week. One third there!