Romeo oh Romeo....

A post will follow later in the week about my lab week, but I have a few new photos I wanted to put up. Evan showed us this adorable situation. Here are a few pictures of Romeo (diademed sifaka) and the squirrel, a photo of Chloris' baby (ringtail) and one of Eduardo(mongoose). Some of them are a bit fuzzy because I cant use flash.

Would risk be different in a female dominated society?

So this week was busy, again, but I had fun in the lab. I created more stimuli, practiced coding and ran more babies.

Something interesting we talked about at lab meeting, which I then continued talking about with Sara and Evan:

Our lab is running risk experiments with both adults, kids and lemurs. The human adults and kids run a gain condition (they risk winning one or three versus two every time) and a loss condition (they lose one every time or risk losing none or two...). The lemurs run only the gain condition. In adults, and I believe in children, boys tend to be more risky. What I talked about with Sara and Evan was the lemurs. Because we don't run any female lemurs, we don't know if this trend would continue. It would be fascinating to see, as female lemurs are dominant (I believe that's what Evan said...). The male ringtails (eulemur catta) tend to run very safe (Aracus often runs 100% safe-two sugar pellets every time). I would love to find out what would happen if we tested female ringtails, however right now none are available.

Number Systems in Babies and Adults

Today turned out to be full of talks about development in children and adults. In the morning, Dr. Brenda Armstrong (who, funny enough, taught my mom in medical school) gave us a talk about how the in-utero heart changes after the baby is born. I was fascinated, and although I don't think I will ever go into pediatric cardiology, Dr. Armstrong's talk reminded me of how incredible our bodies are. Our bodies go through incredible changes in a span of seventy or so years. Not only physically, but developmentally.

The thing that I am most interested in scentifically right now is early childhood development. Anyone who knows me is aware that I love kids. I babysit regularly; it is not just a job but an important part of my life. I have worked in the preschool at Friends School for a community service credit, and learned how to deal with kids that have simple A.D.D. or even selective mutism. Last year I interned at Frank Porter Grahm both in the childcare center with the two and three year olds (again, learning about development while working with kids who had DiGeorges and high functioning autism) as well as on a research project, First School, which looks at ways to improve education in children ages three though eight.

Working in Dr. Brannon's lab fits right in with that line of interest. Today Sara, my mentor, told me about the two ways babies and adults process number. The first system is the analogue system, which is essentially the approximation system. If there are 20 peanuts on the table, you might approximate that there are about 15-25 peanuts. If there are 200 peanuts on the table, that margin of error goes up to say, 150-250 peanuts. It also describes if you hold two weights of different sizes in your hand. With a one to two ratio, you would have no problem saying which was heavier. With a 51 lb weight and a 52 lb weight you might have more trouble.

The object tracking system is the other system that we use. Most adults can keep track of about four things. Sara had me do a little test online (Here it is if you want to try-keep track of the dots that blink at the beginning-http://research.yale.edu/perception/oba/MOT.mov). Although four is the limit for most adults, people like air-traffic controllers can track up to nine or so objects on a screen. Infants, on the other hand, we think can only track three. Infants could distinguish one from three, or two from three, but not three from six. Somehow, that conversion between analogue and infant tracking failed. We are now doing studies that look more into this. Although it is somewhat confusing, as I learn more about it I understand it better.

As usual, the lemurs are quite adorable. I found out today that their names are themed according to species. The ring-tailed lemurs are Greek names (Aracus, Licinius, Teres), the mongoose lemurs Mexican (Miguel, Pedro, Rosalinda, Guillermo), the blue eyed lemurs after blue-eyed movie stars (Tarantino, Witherspoon, etc.). The list goes on. For those of you interested, the website: http://lemur.duke.edu/

Photos-DLC

I took some photos at the DLC yesterday and today- so now you can match the lemurs' faces with personalities!!
Teres-working on ascending number pairs and getting it right!
Miguel using his hands at the computer
PEDRO! Everyone's favorite little mongoose lemur...
Teres, a shy ringtailed lemur
Paiute aka "John Travolta"
Red Rover-the old man was born in 1982!

Babies and Lemurs

My name is Anna Jaffe, I am a rising senior at Carolina Friends School, and I am working in Dr. Elizabeth Brannon's lab at Duke (http://www.duke.edu/web/mind/level2/faculty/liz/cdlab.htm). I am going to be working there for seven weeks, and by the end will have a project to present. I am working in the baby lab most of the time (except for from 3-5, when I am with the lemurs), which is where I will do my project. Right now we are working on ordinal numerical knowledge in infants, which looks at the way infants can understand numbers. Can they tell which of two numbers is greater? Can they see when that changes?

Although Dr. Brannon is my P.I., I am working with lots of different people in the lab. In the baby lab, I am working with Umay Suanda and Emily Hopkins, as well as others in the lab. I am also running tests in the Duke Lemur Center every day with Jennifer, Rosa, and Peter.

Today was my second day in my lab, but I have jumped in right away. I left lunch early so that I could meet the baby who was coming at 12:30. He was a cutle little guy, and was wide-eyed at the big shiny buildings and equipment. We sat him in the chair, and then Umay, Emily and I ran the test. The baby looked at a screen, where different images showed up. He was shown similar images (i.e. more green dots than red dots) for a habituation period. Then, he was given test trials, where he was shown either a familiar (more green than red) or a novel (more red than green) image. We recorded looking time to see whether the baby looked more at the new images than at the ones to which he had been habituated. For his hard wrk, the baby was given an infant scientist award and a t-shirt!

At the DLC, Rosa, Jennifer and I ran the tests on six monkeys. The lemurs work with a machine with a touch screen. Each lemur does either Match to Sample, Risk, or Lesser Numbers. In Match to Sample, the lemurs have to match an image to one of two options; in Risk, lemurs are first habituated to two images-one image gives them two sugar pellets every time, and the other either gives them one or three-then they must pick-will they take the risk or stay with the familiar two pellets; and lesser numbers-the lemur must pick the square with the smaller number to get the pellet.

The lemurs are all so fun, and they all have personalities! Pedro is sweet and very friendly; he is a mongoose lemur. Today for some reason he was curled up into a tiny little ball on the edge of a branch (perhaps he was cold from the fan?). However, he was as excited as ever to run the experiment and would always come over to see us when we walked past. Red Rover, who we don't run tests on, is an old lemur. He was born in 1982 (older than I am-lemurs are middle aged/old at around 15-20) and is now pretty demented. He sits around in his cage with his tongue out-it doesn't go back in! Another lemur, whom I have nicknamed John Travolta, has overactive scent glands (what a smell!). I have nicknamed him thus because he reminds me of a young John Travolta in "Grease"-his hair looks the same as the boys hair in the movie, as if he did it that way on purpose (it's actually his scent...). He is a sweety, albeit that he smells absolutely terrible-like nothing else I've ever seen. And then there's the baby sifaka we walk past on our way back to the lab....but "don't get too close or the mother will pee on you," says Jennifer.

All together I love my lab, and can't wait to keep working with such adorable subjects! Even entering data isn't too bad when every once in a while you get to hang out with two of the cutest things: babies and lemurs!