Raga Bhagavathi, Week 5

I continued to collect more data this week and enter everything into the computer as usual. I've been feeling in a little slump lately because I wasn't sure what the next step of my project would be and it seemed like I would just be doing data collection for my whole stay at the lab. However, I was able to meet with Dr. Lewis and we had a long conversation about what the next step of my project would be. Initially it seemed as though I was continuing on a previous study comparing facial recognition abilities between children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, children with Learning Disorders, children with ADHD, and Typically Developing children. However, my conversation with Dr. Lewis was really beneficial and he explained what I would be doing after I finished collecting as much data as I could. He said that we would be working together to split my subjects into two groups- technologically oriented and non-technologically oriented, and then someone would show me how to analyze the data. He hypothesized that the "techies" would perform worse on the facial recognition task (because they would have less experience in social situations due to their preference to spend time alone and/or on electronics) and the non-techies would perform better on the task. He also explained that there isn't much research on this topic so if we found any conclusive research it could be really rewarding. To be honest, I could listen to Dr Lewis talk for hours on end because he's so smart and everything he explains genuinely interests me. I planned to only have two more weeks in the office and I should be done with data collection this week, so depending on how fast (or slow) the data analysis seems to be moving, I may have to extend my stay by a week- but we'll see!

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Peddie EXP Summer 2018

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