Recently in SRF Category

The participant I had scheduled for this evening did end up having to cancel, which I was expecting. I was still able to come into the lab though to turn in my keys and make sure that all of the materials for the SRF study are in their place and ready for the next bunch of undergraduates who will be working on the self regulation study.

I have had a great experience working at the Carlson Lab. I have really enjoyed the opportunity to work on a study and conduct research sessions. I have learned so much over my year working here, and I'm sure it will all be very useful as I go on to conduct research in graduate school. Looking back, I'm really glad that I chose the Carlson-Zelazo lab to do my directed research. I think that I got a really great experience because I was able to directly participate in the research and do a lot more than just data entry. I have learned a lot about child development and executive functioning. The knowledge I have gained has already been useful in my classes and I'm looking forward to putting the knowledge to use in my future as a Speech Language Pathologist working with children!

Today in lab I worked on just cleaning up some of the files and spreadsheets. I made sure to finishing tracking all of the sessions I've had the past couple weeks to update whether they were able to make it in, rescheduled, or had to cancel. We definitely had a lot of cancellations recently. I think a lot of it had to do with Spring Break and then all the nice weather we've been having. A lot of parents had to cancel because they had forgotten that they already had other commitments or because they had forgotten about the session and scheduled something else. It got tricky, as well, at the end to reschedule because I couldn't schedule past this first week of May, because it's my last week in the lab. So, some participants who could have possibly rescheduled if I'd had more weeks left weren't able to reschedule because they didn't have any time free in these last couple weeks.

I have one more participant tonight, most likely. When I talked to her it sounded like there was a definite possibility she might need to call me back and cancel sometime today, but for now I haven't heard from her, so I'm still planning on coming in later tonight!

On Thursday I had another eight year old into the lab for an SRF study session. The whole family came along which was pretty different for me. I'm used to having just the child and one parent, maybe a couple other siblings. The dad seemed a little less excited to be there than the mom did, but it all worked out okay, I think he actually ended up being pretty interested in what we were studying. No technology glitches this time either, so that was great! I only have one more session left next week and then I'll be completely done running sessions, since I'm graduating.

I have really enjoyed having the opportunity to actually run research sessions. That is really what I was hoping to do when I started directed research, so it has been really exciting for me. I'm so glad I got to be a part of a specific study, it has been a great experience. I've loved meeting all of the families who come to lab and getting to teach them a little bit about the research we are doing, I've learned a lot! I'm hoping that I'll be able to continue doing some research in graduate school!

On Wednesday I had one participant come into lab for an SRF research session. I originally had two sessions scheduled on Tuesday night. One of the sessions I was able to move to Wednesday, the other session had to be cancelled and unfortunately the family won't be able to make it in before the end of the school year. The family who came in on Wednesday was great. They had actually rescheduled a couple of times, but the mom really wanted her daughter to participate, so they kept rescheduling. A couple of the children in the family had participated before and so the mom was really excited and looking forward to participating more in the future. The session went perfectly, there weren't any problems with technology or anythings else, so that was exciting. I think I finally have the computer figured out!

Monday evening I had one eight year old participant come into the lab for an SRF session. The session went very well, both the child and his mother were excited to be there and interested in what we were studying. The computer had some sound glitches again (it worked when I tested it, but then the sound didn't work when I actually went to run the session). I restarted the computer after the DCCS task and then the sound was working again after that for the flanker task. I think from now on maybe I just won't test it before the session, because it seems to work the first time after being turned on. I was supposed to have two sessions tonight, but both ended up having to be cancelled/rescheduled for later in the week. The year is winding up really quickly, I can't believe there are less thank two weeks left! My time at the lab has really flown by!

Today at lab I worked on calling for the SRF study. I was hoping to fill up the last two weeks of the semester with participants. I was almost completely successful, but I wasn't able to fill up the last week of classes. I was able to schedule participants for both weeks, which worked out well. Next week I overscheduled a little, but the following week I was only able to get one participant, so it evens out pretty well. I still have one participant who I was hoping would re-schedule, so perhaps I could fit them in that last week.

I had to do a lot of calling before I was able to get the participants that I did. A lot of the numbers were disconnected or wrong numbers, it seemed like more than usual. I suppose the older the kids on the list are, the more likely it will be that the family's number has changed. I was happy to be able to get a hold of as many families as I was.

Next week I should be booked up running sessions, and then it's already the last week of classes. If I'm not able to schedule an additional session for that last week I'll probably just do some data entry earlier in the week. It would be good to catch up on all of the sessions we've been running. I'd probably also just check up on the participant files for the sessions I've run to make sure all of the receipts are out, all of the Stanford Binet's are fully scored, etc. I'll need to make sure to tie up any loose ends before I graduate.

I'm looking forward to running sessions again next week, it's always more fun to actually have the families into lab than it is to do calling! :)

Today in lab I worked on some calling for the SRF study and I also did a little bit of catch-up housekeeping. I scheduled another participant for next week and I should hopefully have another family calling who is rescheduling from last week. There are only a couple weeks left of the school year now, so hopefully we're able to squeeze quite a few more families in before the end of the year!

I also did some data recording and cleaning up of appointment logs. I like to have it noted which families showed up, cancelled, etc. so I went through the last couple weeks to make sure everything was noted in the appointment log. I was only in lab for a couple hours today, hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to do some more calling and get some more families scheduled to fill up these last couple of weeks!

I was supposed to have three research sessions scheduled this evening, but the first two siblings had to cancel and reschedule. So, I only ended up having one participant tonight. The session went well. The small table and chairs were back for the computer so that was good news! The computer is still having glitches every once and awhile. I tested the computer out before my session and everything was working fine, sound/touch screen/tasks. But then, 20/30 minutes later when we sat down to do the tasks the sound wasn't working, so I ended up just saying "color"/"shape" out loud instead of the computer. Not sure if that data will actually be usable, but I had already gone through all of the directions for the task so I felt like we might as well keep going. Then, at the end of the session, we went back to the computer to repeat one of the tasks, and the sound was working again. So, all in all it was strange. I'm not sure what was going on with the sound there. When I left though, the computer and the sound were working fine again, so there isn't really anything to fix, hopefully it was just a random error. Other than the slight technology glitch the session went very smoothly!

On Monday I had another eight year old come to the lab with her father for the SRF study. The session went very well, the only tricky thing was that the small table for the computer plus the little chairs that go with the computer were missing. It made the session take a bit longer as I was moving the table and chairs we did have around the room during the session to make it work for the computer and non-computer parts of the task. It all worked out just fine though. In the future if that were to happen I would probably grab the little table and chairs from another room, provided no studies were going to be needing them. The family didn't seem to mind the interesting set-up of the room and the little girl actually had fun moving the table and chairs back and forth with me across the room, so it all worked out! I have another session scheduled tonight, so we'll see if the missing table and chairs have returned! :)

I had two participants come to lab today for SRF sessions. They came pretty early, so that was a little stressful, luckily Cathy was able to get an extra laptop for me because the family waiting room was full! Everything ended up working out just fine though. The kids had a lot of energy so they had a little trouble attending to the tasks, but I think it still went pretty well. I had some trouble with a couple of the computer tasks, I got an error message. I'm pretty sure I just must have set up the computer wrong when I switched monitors. I'm going to come in before my next session to figure out how to do it correctly. I know the program works because I've used it before, so I'll just have to ask the other RA because she knows more about setting up the computer tasks. I don't think it will be a problem! I have several sessions next week so that'll be great!