Unit 7: Chapter 12 Single-Subject Experiments

Question 1

ABA design

Answer 1

research design that includes a baseline period, a treatment period, and a subsequent withdrawal of treatment

Question 2

AB design and two of its issues

Answer 2

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

Question 3

ABAB design

Answer 3

also called a repeated treatments or replication design; an ABA design with treatment re- peated after the with- drawal phase

Question 4

single-subject research

Question 5

baseline

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

treatment

Question 7

multiple-baseline design

Answer 7

research design that introduces different ex- perimental manipulations to see if changes coincide with manipulation. Three types of manipulation: behaviors, subjects, and settings (305)

Question 8

Give an example of multiple-baseline across behaviors

Question 9

give an example of multiple-baseline across subjects:

Question 10

Give an example of multiple-baseline across settings

Question 11

changing criterion design

Why is it convincing?

Answer 11

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

Question 12

alternating treatments design

Answer 12

a type of single- participant design that allows the comparison of two different independent variables

Question 13

What is power and what can you do to increase it?

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Name several prominent psychologists in history who used single subjects in psychological research. Briefly describe their areas of research.

Question 15

Compare the assumptions between the single-subject approach and the individual-differences, group-research approach to psychological research.

Question 16

What are the advantages of the single-subject approach?

Answer 16

-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

Question 17

What are the disadvantages of the single-subject approach? Proivde an example for each (A)

Answer 17

• 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)

Question 18

What are the common single-subject research designs?

Question 19

What is the ABA design? What two principal problems are associated with this design?

Question 20

When is the ABAB design superior to the ABA design?

Question 21

What is the baseline? Why is it necessary to maintain a stable baseline before treatment begins?

Question 22

What is a multiple-baseline design? Under what conditions is this design useful?

Question 23

What is a changing-criterion design? Under what conditions is this design useful?

Question 24

Describe briefly two areas of psychology in which the single-subject approach is commonly used.

Answer 24

psychophysics
experimental psychology?

Question 25

What did early researchers assume about the validity of using only one research participant?

Answer 25

individual participants are essentially equivalent and that one should study additional participants only to make sure the original participant was not grossly abnormal.

Answer 26

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

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Questions:

Answer 28

How does increasing the effect weigh in on the importance of single subject reseach? (298-299)