A brain wave helped create Project KIDS, and now brain waves form the basis of an exciting new study for the group. Professor Mike Anderson, from the School of Psychology, said Project KIDS had received a major Australian Research Council grant to study children's brain waves (technically, brain evoked potentials).

"We are interested to see if the development of different areas in their brains matches the development of their abilities," he said. According to Professor Anderson, Project KIDS is unique, with no comparison anywhere in the world.

It started over a decade ago after researchers discussed how unsatisfactory it was to visit children at school to study them. They said it was hard to have enough time with the children to get 'the full picture'. The principal investigators in Project KIDS, since it started at UWA over a decade ago, have been Professor Anderson and Dr Corinne Reid (now at Murdoch University). The study is based in the School of Psychology's innovative Child Study Centre.

"We thought why don't we reverse the usual situation and bring the children here?" Professor Anderson explained. Children visit the centre for a day and take part in activity-based tests, including games, puzzles and outside play-time. "We look at their intellectual progress but also social and emotional behaviours," he said.

Project KIDS uses the School of Psychology's Child Study Centre in most school holiday periods. The Child Study Centre's facilities include two kindergartens, a pre-primary special education unit, laboratories and clinic rooms. As well as providing teaching and research opportunities, it offers a community service because the kindergartens cater for local children aged four and five, while the Special Needs Unit offers support to pre-school aged children throughout Perth who cannot cope at their local schools.

Professor Anderson said the kindergartens were used to teach developmental psychology to undergraduates, while the CSC clinic resources, coordinated by the Director, Associate Professor Jan Fletcher, provided opportunities for undergraduate and masters training in assessment, interviewing and counselling. "It is a supervised environment where they can learn skills and interventions appropriate for children with a variety of learning, developmental and behavioural difficulties," she said.

Dr Reid said the tests helped them collect information about how children learnt and what was "regular and normal" so that in the future, they could tell what wasn't normal. Professor Anderson said it helped researchers learn how to understand situations when children's behaviours went wrong. "We have collected data from about 2100 children over 10 years so we have a good base to compare," he said. Undergraduate and postgraduate students from UWA and other universities are involved in Project KIDS research.

Dr Reid said parents were not given 'results' of their children's activities but she believed parents still found it valuable to contribute. "They are happy that their child is OK and that being involved in research is a way they can help children who have problems," she said.

Project KIDS will form the basis of a new neurocognitive development research unit involving Professor Anderson, Associate Professor Maybery, Dr Fox and Dr Bayliss in the School of Psychology. Support will be provided by both the Faculty of Life and Physical Sciences and the University.