To youngsters in the studies, each apprentice must be part scientist, camp counselor and chaperone. This inner rescheduling allows Carskadon to test whether biological clocks do indeed slow as youngsters enter adolescence. It's like they have an older brother or sister around all the time to play games. They may have lunch at 2 a.m., or they may wake up at midnight and think its morning. While the pre-teens sleep, the apprentices, supervised by the lab's permanent technical staff, oversee the polygraph, electrocardiogram and other equipment.
Saliva collection is one of their more unusual scientific duties when the youngsters awaken.
At intervals daily, each youngster chews a cotton ball or spits into a tube. Saliva is checked for level of melatonin, a hormone that marks biological time. The subjects are also put through computerized performance tests that measure their drowsiness. Just after Memorial Day, the research assistants, primarily Brown students or new graduates, arrive at the lab. Because the summer research projects are a complex blend of sleep, biological rhythms and human development, their first two weeks are devoted to 8 to 10 hours a day of biology lectures, explanations of experimental design and hands-on lab work.