The red kangaroo hops, taunting Bumpus by flipping itself upside-down.

Bumpus's eyes widen. He stares intently at the toy.

"That," he says as he points to the plastic animal. He looks to his mother, Amy Bumpus of State College, for a signal. Scott looks, but doesn't touch.

Thomson walks back into the room and tells Scott he can now play with the toy.

This is one type of situation presented to children who participate in studies at the Infant Temperament Laboratory, 149 E. Henderson, Thomson said.

While Scott was debating whether to touch the toy, Thomson observed his behavior from behind a one-way glass. In actual research, the response would be recorded. Researchers would note if the child touched the toy, how long the child waited before touching it and any parent interaction.

Most children would touch the toy, Thomson said.

"(The situation) shows whether they are able to delay gratification," she said.

Scott is not part of the study, she said, adding she used him as a demonstration of the type of activity that goes occurs in the lab. His older brother, Jonathan, 3, participated in a two-year pilot from 1995 to 1996, she added.

Other activities gauge inhibition by testing the willingness of a child to look into a black box or the frustration levels exhibited when a child cannot open a plastic Ziploc bag to get to M&M's.

Students in the lab are wrapping up a two-year project that included 150 children and their parents. They videotaped their subjects when they were 2 weeks old, 4 months old and during two inoculations at a doctor's office. Parents also brought their children into the lab nine times, Sam Putnam (graduate-health development and family studies) said.

The focus of the lab is to study temperament in children, said Cynthia Stifter, associate professor of human development, who started the Infant Temperament Lab about 12 years ago.

"Temperament," she said, "is individual variation in behavior."

The studies originated with the study of colic -- prolonged bouts of crying for more than three hours per day -- but have since expanded to study emotion regulation as well as other student projects.

Currently, four graduate and eight undergraduate students work in the lab and some gather data for theses, Stifter said.

"The 2-year-olds are the most difficult. This is reflective of their stage of development -- noncompliance," she said. "As I tell my students, working with infants is probably the most difficult human stage to work with."

When a parent asks a child do something and the child says 'no,' he or she asserting independence, Stifter said. "Saying 'no' is asserting who they are -- this autonomy, this separate self," she said.

For 2-year-olds and parents, it is a constant struggle and sometimes lab appointments must be canceled due to a child's unwieldy behavior, Thomson said.

Although parents are important factors in the child's development, the lab focuses on the child's individual behavior, Stifter said.

"What is the basic behavioral predisposition of the infant?" Stifter asked. "Even in the same family, people are different. Parents probably have some ideal of what a good kid is, but they have to adjust immediately when they meet the kid. The child will tell you best what is the best way to deal with the child."