Cyrus is a Baby Scientist

Before Cyrus was born I went to The Baby Show in Toronto and one of the vendors was the BEE (Brain & Early Experiances) Lab from Ryerson University. We signed up our kids for their studies not thinking any more about it till a few weeks ago.

After playing phone tag all day I finally spoke to Nicole and found out they were holding a study on babies that are 3 months old and Cyrus was a perfect fit.

 The goal of this study is to understand how your baby’s natural, daily experiences influence how they recognize, identify, and learn about faces.

We set up a time for Nicole to drop of the 2 cameras that Cyrus would be wearing during the next week and when she arrived she explained in more detail.

The cameras would record from Cyrus’ view and I got to choose when they were on. I chose to do both normal times like when he was watching me clean and also on our excursions to the park and grocery store. If there was ever a point that I recorded and I didn’t want to be kept I would document it and it would be erased (although I kept it all).

We arrived at Ryerson 10 minutes late for our appointment (obviously) and met with both Nicole and 2 other students. So nice and pleasant and they helped keep our oldest kids entertained with colouring pages and toys while Cyrus did his tests. I was surprised that they behaved for 2 hours (kind-of).

There were 3 tests that we did. All of them involve Cyrus sitting on my lap while he watched a screen with smiling Ryerson Students on it. Firstly, he just looked at the screen, next they put heart monitor stickers on him and lastly he got to wear a cool cap that monitored his brainwaves while watching all of the videos. He was not fussy so it went by really quickly and it was super sweet to hear him coo and try to talk to all of the smiling faces.

While at Ryerson, we would be showing your baby a whole bunch of faces and we would watch to see how long your baby liked to look at the faces. How much infants like to look at one face over another tells us about whether they can tell the difference between similar-looking faces and which faces they prefer

Cyrus got a stuffed toy, award and honorarium for participating in the study. I got all of his videos and heart monitor results on DVDs so that I could see “Cyrus’ World” at home. It was a great experience, one I would love to do again and will recommend to others. How cool is it to see your child’s heart rate and brain waves in a pleasant setting.

If you want more information on the BEE Labs and their programs you can find them here or connect with them on Facebook.

Would you ever participate in a study like this one? Why or why not?

Aneta Alaei

Aneta is a Toronto-based mom of four that loves a good meal, great company, and learning something new. In her free time, you can find her trying to keep yet another plant alive.

Find me on: Web | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook