Exam 12: Single Subject Experiments

Define and/or describe the term "statistical power".

Single subject research

A behavioral therapist is trying to decrease an autistic child's disruptive behavior. He first observes the baseline level of the behavior, then observes the behavior again after his intervention. Since his therapy seems to be effective, he continues to treat the child in the same way. This type of design is called an:

Consider the following hypothetical experiment: A researcher conducted a study to decrease the frequency with which a college professor used the words "uh" and "you know" during his lectures. The treatment consisted of a small signal at the back of the room which the experimenter flashed each time the professor uttered one of the verbal phrases targeted for extinction. An A-B-A design was used to assess the treatment effect. The results indicated a high baseline frequency of the behaviors, followed by a dramatic decrease in frequency when the treatment was initiated. The behaviors increased again when the treatment was withdrawn. Describe an alternative single-subject design that might be used to demonstrate a treatment effect.

Which one of the following strategies is not a basic control strategy in single-subject research?

Mary was frustrated with her son John. He almost never took out the trash and only cleaned his bathroom about half of the time that it needed it. Mary wanted to see if paying John was an effective treatment, so she started giving him cash every time he took out the trash. He soon became outstanding in this area, taking it out every time that she asked. Since the money worked so well with the trash, she decided to see if it would also help him to clean his room more often. Soon after she started paying him for cleaning his room, that behavior also increased dramatically. What experimental design was Mary using?

A woman with chronic pain takes a course in relaxation therapy and reports that she has less pain. Can you be sure that the course really led to the pain relief?

A researcher conducts a study to bring about permanent changes in three different behaviors in a single subject. Which one of the following designs would be most appropriate for this study?

If a stable baseline cannot be obtained

A researcher plans to use the reversibility of the desired target behavior as evidence of a treatment effect. She does not want the subject to leave the experiment showing the original, undesirable behavior. Which one of the following designs would be most appropriate for this study?

Researchers who favor the single subject approach over the group research approach assume that most variability within the subject's behavior:

A single-subject research design that manipulates multiple treatments one at a time, to determine their effect is the:

According to the text, _______ did work on memory in which he was his own participant.

Skipper does the laundry 25% of the time and washes dishes about 50% of the time. Barbie decides to start praising Skipper for doing the laundry. After that, Skipper begins to do the laundry about 75% of the time. Since that was successful, Barbie decides to try praising Skipper's dish washing, too. Soon, Skipper is washing the dishes 100% of the time. What experimental design was Barbie using?

____________________ espoused the use of introspection, which is the careful reporting of one's own experiences.

What kind of research lends itself to single-subject experiments? Should researchers use single-subject research whenever it is possible to do so?

The problem with an ABA design is that

The square of the correlation coefficient gives

When is the changing-criterion design an appropriate design to use? When

Despite the name, in the ______________ single-subject design, more than one person can be tested.