Research can often become painstakingly monotonous, yet the excellent researcher finds his own way to make each new test subject, each new petri dish, each new drawing exciting. Yet perhaps one of the greatest rewards of my project came attached to a smiling sketch on a miniature yellow Post-It note. Through that single note, I regained the excitement and courage present at the beginning of my project. A single note was able to refocus my attention on the children. I quickly learned that researchers do not necessarily need a Nobel Prize to adorn their resumes.
Big gifts come in small packages.
The Probable Period I soon entered one of the most exciting stages of my research that of tabulations, probabilities, T-tests, and conclusions. My results, however, far exceeded my expectations. As I waded through calculations, a telling set of bar graphs and data tables emerged from my notebook computer. I feel that my research has shown that from the earliest weeks of life, children with Down's syndrome are, indeed, responsive to language programs ranging from book reading to speech-language pathologists to sign language implementation. Moreover, language ability is integrally connected to mental ability and social activity.