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Emerging relations between attention and negative affect in the first two years of life
The CAT Lab focuses on the ways in which emotion and attention interact to shape how children navigate through their social world. We do this through questionnaires and observations of behavior in our laboratory. This particular study will examine how children respond to emotional and social events. We ask infants and their parents to visit our lab 5 times, each visit being 4-6 months apart and usually lasting a little over an hour. During each visit to our lab, we ask infants to look at pictures of people and animals on a computer monitor while we record where their eyes are looking on the screen. Children also participate in several different games and play with different toys (just like those found in a common household such as balls, puppets, plastic animals, etc.). Some of these activities involve parents and some do not, but we do ask parents to stay in the room with their child for the full visit. During visits 2-5, we would also like to collect electroencephalogram (EEG) and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) data from your child. EEG measures the electrical activity in the brain using small metal sensors placed on the head with gel. RSA measures heart rate and breathing by placing small sensors on the torso. These procedures do not hurt, are low-risk, and provide real-time measurement of your child’s autonomic nervous system signals, much like an arm cuff measures blood pressure. When the sensors are removed, some children may feel like a bandage is being pulled off.
infant born within +/- 3 weeks of due date
Infants without any serious medical complications
Infants of a healthy birth weight (>2500g; >5 lbs, 8 oz.)
infants <2500g; <5lbs, 8 oz at birth
Infants who experienced any serious medical complications