Missing Data

The boys had their two-year visit for the Twin Study they're participating in.  The morning part was a developmental assessment, and the afternoon was the MRI (brain scan).  (In between we went to the playground and had a fun lunch with N and her daughter S.)  The boys did pretty well with the developmental testing, which is basically a series of games, but despite our best efforts, we could not get them to stay asleep at the MRI place, so they weren't able to do the scanning.  We managed to get both of them to fall asleep, but for the MRI to happen they have to stay asleep while you 1) put them on the platform for the machine, 2) put headphones on them, and 3) actually move them into the machine for the scan.  They claim that they're able to successfully do this with 80% of the two-year olds in the study, which we find amazing. 

It was interesting to see what the boys did and didn't do during the developmental testing session.  James did really well on most of the stuff, though he didn't do the "two step command" (following two instructions at once; in this case, "give me the ball and close the book."  Mattie did it perfectly and the tester said that most kids don't get that one.)  Matthew was very cooperative with the first part of the testing, and then wanted to go find James or play with different toys, so the last part was tricky trying to keep his attention.  In fairness to him, the tests involve switching between a lot of different little toys doing different things (e.g., first they have to pick out which toy is the car; then they have to build something with blocks; then they have to sort shapes; etc.), so it's hard if they take a liking to one because then it gets snatched away from them.  Mattie didn't do any of the sorting tasks right (e.g., putting a triangle with the other triangles, putting the blocks in one side of a box and the spoons in another), which I was really surprised about because I'm pretty sure he can do that kind of thing.  He might not have understood the point of the game.  James, on the other hand, got all of those perfectly. 

The tester commented that he hadn't heard another two year old talking as well as Matthew.  Go, Mattie!  (Of course, the tester was a research assistant and I'm not sure how long he'd been doing this job, but still, it was nice to hear.)  Once we got him to cooperate, he did really well on all the verbal stuff.  In one part,  he was supposed to name various pictures, and one was a comb.  Mattie said, "Haircut!"  I don't know if they counted that one, but I think they should have.  :)

We won't get any formal results from these tests, but just from our un-expert observations, it seems like the boys are pretty well on track.  :)

James's hearing therapist came yesterday after a month off, and she was very pleased with all the sounds he was saying and how he was doing in general.  She said he was doing all the developmentally appropriate things.   Yay, James!