Global Scales for Early Development Study

Astra was supposed to go outside and take a running kick at a ball. She did, and then she continued on to make a run for it

The GSED is a test program that is used to track early childhood development. In order to calibrate the curves, they need to validate both the short and long forms of the test with actual children and caregivers. The short form of the test is the one where they ask caregivers what the kids can do and you report and then they estimate development based on that. The long form of it is where they actually play with the child and see whether or not they can do the thing.

Astra Meridian was recruited into the study through an email from UCSF, presumably because we're in their MyChart system. There have been earlier calls we've been part of where she was not selected because I wasn't brought up here. Presumably the foreign nature of my childhood throws off the study. In any case, this one could use us and I'm happy to participate so we went.

Facility

The whole thing was done at the UCSF Pritzker Building in Mission Bay. The place has valet parking but there was only one other car in the garage. When we went up in the elevator, the two scientists who were going to be measuring Astra were waiting.

The examination room was a 300 sq. ft. rectangular room. One of the examiners sat in the corner, while the other sat across the desk from me and talked to me and Astra. She had a bag of props and so on to talk with Astra about.

The Short Form

The short form of the GSED test is a quiz administered to the caregiver. Since I, Roshan, have been Astra's primary caregiver for a while, I answered this portion of the test. The instructions were pretty straightforward: no clarifying questions, and I can answer yes / no / repeat. I could add clarifying remarks but it was clearly meant to be a yes/no test. The examiner recorded everything on an iPad that faced her.

Most of the questions were just the standard early childhood stuff like "Can your child stack 3 blocks?" and so on. For some of the questions, the examiner would turn the iPad around and show me an illustration or illustrated animation of a child doing something. For instance, one was "Can your child run?" with an illustration of what they meant by running.

There was also a big section the examiner had to read me that told me that the ability of my child to answer or not answer things had no bearing on whether they were smart or so on.

The Long Form

Earlier in the day, Astra had insisted on many activities so I thought she might be tired

Most of the fun was in the long form. I was worried that Astra might have been tired from running around and playing with her friend Sophie, but that turned out to not be the case. In the beginning she was somewhat shy and didn't engage the examiner. The first few games involved putting pegs in holes on a board and she didn't want to do anything, but then at first I held her in my lap until she got comfortable, and she was happy to play.

I wasn't allowed to assist her at any stage of the games, but she would sometimes grab my hand and push it towards something. At the beginning she'd use my hand as a prop to manipulate things. That changed when she was asked to wipe my face with a prop - she then wanted to sit next to me instead of in my lap, and she reached up and wiped my face. After that, every time a game was taken away, she'd point with her index fingers and tap the table to signify that she wanted the next one out. It was terribly cute!

At one stage, she was asked to identify things on an iPad. Astra has used touch screen devices before and she is very enamored of them. In classical child fashion, she would choose not to point to things I've definitely seen her identify before. On the other hand, she also did demonstrate that she could screw and unscrew a big jar - which I didn't think she could reliably do.

I was able to stay out of this part once she got into the flow of it because she was no longer interested in using me as a prop; except for one short period where I took a break to give her some water. Eventually, the whole thing wrapped up, and if I'm being honest, it seemed like Astra had an absolute blast playing all the games.