Museum of Science, Boston

The Discovery Center's Living Laboratory

Learning together through inquiry and play

Contact Us

Contact the Discovery Center and Living Lab staff at livinglab@mos.org

An Infant Revolution

The research in this section utilizes innovative methods for developing a better understanding of infants' cognitive abilities, even before they can speak.

In 2006, the New Yorker ran an excellent piece titled The Baby Lab: How Elizabeth Spelke Peers into the Infant Mind in which Dr. Spelke describes the current state of infant research from her own unique perspective.

Completed Research

How do children classify objects?

Cognitive researcher Dr. David Rakison and his students at Carnegie Mellon University study how children group objects and form categories.

This study examined how infants - aged 14, 18, and 22 months - develop the ability to classify, an essential scientific reasoning skill.

Previous Research

What types of visual patterns attract a baby's attention?

Families that visit the Discovery Center can use the toys in the Infant Area to find out what types of patterns attract their babies' attention.

What can babies see?

Optometrists, or "eye doctors", usually ask adults to read rows of letters in order to determine how well we can see, but how do they test an infant's vision?