It Continues!

This is the room we usually chill in when not in the lab:


And this is the vision lab:


And this is the bite-bar setup (where the observer sits):


Yesterday was pretty neat because I got to learn how to use the Maxwellian system and collect some data on Armando. I was a bit nervous at first because I wanted to be perfectly sure about what buttons to press and when, that sort of thing, because that data will be used in our experiment. The data on me yesterday was just pilot data, meaning that it was only taken to get us familiar with the setup and to make sure everything is in working order.

The machine is pretty simple to use, although it can do other, potentially more interesting things than what we’ll be using it for. After turning the system on, you have to turn on the computer and run the program that allows you to input the values that are used to generate the stimulus. But before doing any of that, the observer (the person on the bite-bar and who will be looking at the stimuli) has to ensure that he’s properly aligned with the system.



Then the proper filter must be in place in the system, otherwise the bleaching step won’t work. The person has to initially adapt to the dark for 10 minutes; all the lights aside from the computer monitor and a flashlight (with a red beam) are turned off, and big pieces of black cloth and cardboard cover up any of the light that could potentially reach the observer. Once 10 minutes have elapsed, the person gets in position in front of the viewing window and gets bleached – a hella bright light is shone on their eye for 10 seconds. This hurts, fyi, but doesn’t do permanent damage :oB

As a little background info, the cells in your eyes that send off information to your brain about the light that they detect contain components that break apart when light is presented to them. It takes time for the components to be put back together, and when someone adapts to the dark and then gets the flood of bright light, all of the cells in the area of the retina exposed to the light must, basically, get recalibrated. Thus, we can measure differences in the perception of stimuli based on the time it takes the person to re-adapt to the dark. Stimuli are presented at 1 minute and at 4 minutes after bleaching, then again at 4 minute intervals until 28 minutes have elapsed. This is repeated twice in one session.

The stimuli we’re concerned with aren’t very exciting...they’re just small circles of color presented directly to the observer’s retina. The observer fixates his gaze onto a focal point, and after the stimulus is presented to the left of the focal point, he has to describe the color (in terms of hue and saturation). The experimenter writes the responses down, sets up the next stimulus, and waits until it’s time to present it.

Yeah, not the most stimulating research out there, but I think it’s cool, even if I don’t really understand how the Maxwellian system in the lab works~ The sessions are pretty boring (taking about 1.5 hours each), especially because you’re in the dark the whole time, but it’s made tolerable because you get all chit-chatty with the other person in the room.

Today, Armando ran me on the system in the morning. At 1:00 I had to attend a seminar on basic research methods, which was quite a snoozer because I’ve taken a whole class on that stuff, plus I’ve done research already, so I knew the drill. At 2:00, my peeps and I built a very crude Maxwellian system, from this:



to this:


That was really fun, mainly because I enjoy putting stuff together. We put in some colored filters and a prism that enabled us to combine lights, giving us somewhat of an idea of how the big system works in the lab. Finally, we got to take off the cardboard that was on the lab machine and take a gander at its inner-workings; I’m still amazed by the fact that we need so much expensive junk just to do something incredibly simple, but that’s neither here nor there :o)

Sidenote: While I was taking photos today, Vicki asked me if I wanted her to take my picture, or if I wanted to take pictures of them. The thought never occurred to me because I was mainly concerned with showing off the lab and the equipment, neglecting to assume that you guys would also like to see the folks I'm working with. I also thought it would be rude to take their pictures, though, since I barely know them, but I might sneak some shots of them later on.

It Begins

Some background info:
Several months ago, I was told about a 9-week research program that would be up at Colorado State University in the summer. The program would be geared toward cognition and neuroscience. Naturally, I became interested immediately because those are “my things” in terms of my major interests in psychology, particularly the aspect of research in general. I read about the program and decided to apply with the help of a few of the professors at Metro. Much to my delight, I was one of 12 people to be accepted into the program (out of ~170 applicants).

Eventually, June rolled around. After the 1.5 hour journey from Denver to Ft. Collins, I moved into my dorm at CSU on Saturday with the help of my dad and my boyfriend. My room is on the top floor of the northwest side of Parmelee Hall, which made moving in ~super fun~, but it honestly wasn’t that bad :o) My room is pretty nice – well, as nice as a dorm can be. Here are some pictures of my room and Parmelee Hall:

As it turns out, I don’t have a roommate. I got lucky. Out of the 12 people in the program, 11 are female, meaning 10 of those people got paired up and have to share a room, and I’m apparently #11. To make matters more interesting, I’m one of only two people who is doing a study on perception (everyone else is doing stuff on cognition), and I’m on the 3^rd floor whereas everyone aside from two others are on the 2^nd floor. All of that kinda makes me feel a little secluded, but most of you probably know that I’m a pretty solitary person in general, so I don’t mind ;o)

My neighbors, who I met on Saturday, are extremely nice which is good because I’ll be sharing a bathroom with them and most likely be interacting with them frequently because we’re the only REU mind and brain peeps on the 3^rd floor. I met the rest of the people at a BBQ on Sunday; that was a bit awkward because, as you know, I’m not very talkative around people I don’t know, especially considering that psych people tend to be more outgoing than folks involved in other sciences (recall that I went to Mines for a semester, so I can vouch for this).

Anyway. Today was orientation, and we received the basic information about how the program will unfold – in addition to conducting and analyzing our own study, we are required to complete a general course on cognition, perception and neuroscience. It should be pretty straightforward for me because I’ve taken courses on all of those areas before. There will also be weekly seminars and workshops that will help us perform our research, give us an idea of research methods we won’t be able to use this summer (such as EEGs), and provide tips for applying to graduate schools.

As far as I know, everyone who is doing work in cognition has some flexibility in terms of what they want to do their study on. Most people seem to be interested in memory, although at least one person is planning on doing work with language acquisition. Unfortunately for me, however, I was unable to choose what to do because my mentor already has the study set up, essentially, and due to the nature of perception research, we need to get started ASAP.

Perception research is interesting because many studies include only a handful of participants, but each participant must be involved in the study for several hours, oftentimes 10 hours or more. Studies in the field of cognition usually have 50+ participants who are only required to give an hour or so of their time for data collection.

The four participants in our study are my CSU mentor (Vicki), a graduate student (Lucinda), another undergraduate student (Armando), and...me. That’s right, we're participants in our own study! :oP I’m excited for this because, frankly, I’m a nerd who really enjoys this sort of thing, and it also means I don’t have to use any of my grant money to pay participants.

The research I will be working on involves color perception in the peripheral visual field. We’re going to consider how stimulus size, intensity and hue (and where the stimulus is presented on the retina) impact how the stimulus is actually perceived by the participant. The stimuli are circles of light presented to one eye via an interesting machine called a Maxwellian-view system.

I don’t know the ins and outs of the machine yet, but I will be trained to use it tomorrow. Today I got my color vision analyzed – I had to arrange several series of color chips in what I perceived to be the proper order to ensure that I am a normal trichromat. Then, I had to adjust a stimulus several times to where it was matching another in brightness. I’m not sure what kind of information was gathered from that nor how it will be used in our study, but I’m sure I will find out tomorrow.

Perhaps the most frustrating and interesting part of my day today was calibrating the Maxwellian apparatus to my eye. Things were substantially more irritating than usual because I have glasses with a strong prescription and therefore had to wear them while wearing an eyepatch over my left eye. But before even being able to do the calibration, I had to make myself a bite-bar, which is a horseshoe-shaped piece of metal sticking out perpendicularly from the top of a metal rod. I had to make a wax impression of my teeth over the horseshoe-shaped part because this is the part I must keep my mouth on to steady my head in order to view the stimuli appropriately. Ain’t life grand?

The bite-bar can be screwed into part of the table in front of the machine. The goal is to ensure that the entire stimulus fits directly in front of your pupil, and getting it exactly right is more tedious than it seems (supposedly it can take over 2 hours for some people, but it only took me about a half hour. I’m still not sure if I did it exactly right, though, because there’s essentially no comparison to go by!). After that, I got to see how the actual stimuli will be presented during the study, then I chatted some more with Vicki and Armando.

Tomorrow I will serve as the pilot participant to get Armando comfortable with running the machine. This is unfortunate for me because when I run it I will be collecting actual data, meaning I have less screw-up leeway ;oP We’ll see how that goes.

I’ll work on getting more pictures of where I’ll be working (and what I’ll be working with) soon, but I’m not sure if I can take photos with the flash on in the vision testing and lab rooms due to the sensitivity of the equipment. In the meantime, here are some random pictures of the campus:


(More here)

Lastly, here's my address:

Katie Youngpeter
343 Parmelee Hall
Ft. Collins, CO 80521