Unit 7: Chapter 12 Single-Subject Experiments Flashcards
ABA design
research design that includes a baseline period, a treatment period, and a subsequent withdrawal of treatment
AB design and two of its issues
also called a comparison design; single- participant research de- sign that consists of a baseline followed by a treatment (301)
1)it may be impossible to return to the baseline (like surgically removing something)
2) you may not want the patient to revert back to their baseline
ABAB design
also called a repeated treatments or replication design; an ABA design with treatment re- peated after the with- drawal phase
single-subject research
baseline
the measure of behavior before treatment that establishes a reference point for evaluating the effect of treatment 301
It measures the current level of the behavior, and it predicts what the behavior would be in the future if no treatment were administered.
treatment
multiple-baseline design
research design that introduces different ex- perimental manipulations to see if changes coincide with manipulation. Three types of manipulation: behaviors, subjects, and settings (305)
Give an example of multiple-baseline across behaviors
give an example of multiple-baseline across subjects:
Give an example of multiple-baseline across settings
changing criterion design
Why is it convincing?
research design that introduces succes- sively more stringent criteria for reinforcement to see if behavior change coincides with the changing criteria (cool!-I could try this on myself!)
It means the reward is encouraging greater and greater hurdles
alternating treatments design
a type of single- participant design that allows the comparison of two different independent variables
What is power and what can you do to increase it?
a researcher has two ways of increasing the probability of finding a significant result in an experiment: increasing the size of the effect or increasing the size of the sample (google)
a researcher has two ways of increasing the probability of finding a significant result in an experiment: increasing the size of the effect or increasing the size of the sample 298
Name several prominent psychologists in history who used single subjects in psychological research. Briefly describe their areas of research.
Compare the assumptions between the single-subject approach and the individual-differences, group-research approach to psychological research.
What are the advantages of the single-subject approach?
-Avoiding ethical issues:
if it is ethically problemati to have a control group in your design you can swithc to single subject
Can’t get enought participants for the study (not enough people with that illness or something)
Individual performance
People or animals in a single-participant design act as their own controls, similar to a within-subjects design (Morgan & Morgan, 2001). This avoids the possibility that the average picture is a distortion of the behavior of the individ- ual participants, which is a potential problem whenever data are averaged over many participants. (297-graph example)
Flexibility in design: ou can modify the independent varriable according to changing needs in a SSD, you can also change what is needed when something significant in the enviornment changes
What are the disadvantages of the single-subject approach? Proivde an example for each (A)
- It may be impossible to control the other sources of variability suffi- ciently to observe the experimental effect in one subject.
-some experimental effects are by definition between-subjects effects. (you can’t teach two methods to the same person)
What are the common single-subject research designs?
What is the ABA design? What two principal problems are associated with this design?
When is the ABAB design superior to the ABA design?
What is the baseline? Why is it necessary to maintain a stable baseline before treatment begins?
What is a multiple-baseline design? Under what conditions is this design useful?
What is a changing-criterion design? Under what conditions is this design useful?
Describe briefly two areas of psychology in which the single-subject approach is commonly used.
psychophysics
experimental psychology?
What did early researchers assume about the validity of using only one research participant?
individual participants are essentially equivalent and that one should study additional participants only to make sure the original participant was not grossly abnormal.
The single-participant tradition assumes that most variability in the participant’s behavior is imposed by the situation and therefore can be removed by careful attention to experimental control. The individual-differences, group-research tradition assumes that much of the variability is intrinsic and should be statistically controlled and analyzed. 296
An experiment that employs large groups of participants will be likely to dis- cover that an independent variable has an effect even if the effect is a minor one. 298
In a single-participant experiment, the effect of a minor variable is less likely to be discovered so the experimenter will not be distracted by it. In addition, the researcher can spend time reducing variability so that the effect of a given variable will be maximized, instead of spending time testing more participants 298
Questions:
How does increasing the effect weigh in on the importance of single subject reseach? (298-299)
