What I’ve been up to
So far, I’ve been reading journal articles about prosopagnosia (the inability to recognize faces), most of which have been written by my mentors. Reading their research has been fascinating, as I’ve had the opportunity to take the measures they use in their studies as well as talk to them personally about their work.
I have also been helping debug the battery of tests we will be using for our study this summer on familial trends in prosopagnosia. In addition to getting to take the test to familiarize myself with the measures, I’ve been helping find problems in the way the test is presented as well as check for multiple browser compatibility. We’ll be administering the test online, which makes it much easier to distribute. However, it also raises a whole set of additional problems, so we’re lucky to have Sam Wilmer with us. Sam is one of Ken’s graduate students, as well as a great programmer. After I mentioned I know python, he suggested I help code for another study. It would be pretty cool if I got to work with psychology (my major) and computer science (my minor) this summer!