The studies in INVISION Lab are conducted by Professor James
L. Dannemiller and his technical staff, as well as graduate students
and postdoctoral fellows.
To conduct our studies, we rely on the help of the babies and
their parents who volunteer their time to participate.
Our procedure is a very simple one. Your infant will be comfortably
sitting in an infant seat in front of a computer monitor for a
brief period of time (approximately 15 minutes) and various patterns
will be presented on the screen. The patterns will vary depending
on the particular study, but typically they imply different contrast,
colors and/or movement. You will stay with your infant throughout
your entire visit, which will be the only one you pay to our lab.
A video camera, located above the monitor, records the infant’s
eye movements as he/she looks at the patterns. We will observe
your infant’s eye movements and we will measure how much
time does he/she spend with each pattern. Like adults, babies
look longer at things they find new or surprising. We are interested
in when and how fast the baby makes an eye movement in relation
to the time of the presentation of a pattern; these eye movements
tell us what type of visual information infants are interested
in and how they analyze this information. It is also an indication
of how visual development takes place.
Most infants find this kind of experiment very interesting, nonetheless
it is up to them to look at the patterns or not. If at any time
or any point the infant becomes sleepy or hungry or starts crying
we stop the study. Your baby’s happiness and comfort is the
most important aspect of the experiment.
If you are interested in having your infant participating in
our study, please fill in
the form and we will contact you.
Click to see a baby orienting to sight and sound.
(Note: you might have to let the movie play through once to buffer it so that it then plays smoothly.)
