Today we took Porter to the language lab at USC for him to participate in two studies on language acquisition. In both of them his reactions were videotaped as he sat on my lap in a darkened, soundproof room. In one they looked at his response to flashing lights and a made up language; in the other they measured if he had a different attention span for statements vs. questions by seeing how long until he turned away from the video screen. It was a fairly entertaining field trip for us all and earned us some free parking so we could go enjoy the Science Center adjacent to campus afterwards.
Here you can see Porter losing interest in the video and turning around to look at me. I was wearing headphones blasting classical music so I wouldn't influence Porter with my reaction to the sounds and video. 
At the end of it all, Matilda asked, "Does Porter know how to talk now?" Priceless. The researchers both really got a kick out of her perception that they could so easily teach him to talk.
1 comment:
If he continues to grow as he has been then he is gonna have to learn how to talk or people will wonder why a child that appears to be a 5 year old cant communicate yet...haha
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