EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 12: Within-Subjects

Designs Small N
 Small N Designs
 ABA Designs
 Multiple Baseline Design
 Changing Criterion Designs
 Discrete Trials Designs
 When to Use Large N and Small N
Designs
What is a large N design?
A large N design compares the performance of groups
of subjects.
How does a large N design differ from a small
N design?
A small N design studies one or two subjects, often
using variations of the ABA reversal design.
Aggregate Effects
Aggregate effects are the pooled findings from many
subjects.
Why do small N researchers challenge
large N experiments?
They argue that large N studies ignore individual
subject responses to the IV and instead report
aggregate results or trends.

When subjects vary greatly in their response to the

IV, this can create the appearance of no difference
between the groups.
Why might a clinical psychologist use small
N designs?
A clinical psychologist could use a small N design to
test a treatment when there are insufficient subjects
to conduct a large N study and when she wants to
avoid the ethical problem of an untreated control
group.
How about an animal researcher?
Animal researchers prefer small N designs to
minimize the acquisition and maintenance cost,
training time, and possible sacrifice of their animal
subjects.
Which historical development caused the
shift to large N designs?
Sir Ronald Fisher’s (1935) creation of the analysis
of variance allowed inferential testing of large N
data.
Where have small N designs been most
extensively used?
Small N designs have been most extensively used in
operant conditioning research.

B. F. Skinner examined the continuous behavior of

individual subjects in preference to analyzing
discrete measurements from separate groups
of subjects.
Baseline
In both large and small N designs, baselines
are control conditions that allow us to measure
behavior without the influence of the IV.
How did Kazdin explain the decision of
many clinical researchers to end without
a return to baseline?
It would be ethically indefensible to cause a patient
to relapse by returning to baseline after treatment
appeared to improve behavior.
When is this most important?
When relapse threatens the health or safety
of the patient or others, as in self-injurious,
and suicidal or homicidal behavior.
What price do researchers pay when they
can't return to baseline?
They can’t rule out the possibility that the
patient’s clinical improvement was caused
by an extraneous variable.
Multiple Baseline Design
In a multiple baseline design, a series of baselines
and treatments are compared within the same
subject, and once treatments are administered, they
are not withdrawn.

This approach could also be used to evaluate the effect

of a treatment administered to different individuals after
baselines of different lengths.
A researcher can evaluate the effects of a treatment on
two or more behaviors or on the same behavior in
different settings.
How might this design overcome the
ethical problem of withdrawing an
effective treatment?
In a multiple baseline design, an experimenter never
withdraws treatments after administering them.
How do researchers analyze data from
small N experiments?
Researchers often visually inspect changes in the
dependent variable across treatment conditions. The
independent variable’s effect is often apparent.

They may also use statistics to analyze small N

data.
Why is statistical analysis of small N data
controversial?
Critics are concerned about generalizing from a
single subject to a population.

Unless 50 measurements are taken during each

baseline and treatment phase, important
assumptions underlying inferential tests may be
violated.
Changing Criterion Designs
In changing criterion designs, the criteria for
reinforcement are incrementally increased as
participants succeed.

For example, initially, a subject might receive a

reward for 30 minutes of daily exercise, later, for 45
minutes, and finally, for 60 minutes.

Reinforcement for successive approximations

of the target behavior is central to athletic training,
behavior modification, and biofeedback and
neurofeedback.
Discrete Trials Design
A discrete trials design is a small N design without
baselines used in psychophysical research.

Instead, the impact of different levels of the

independent variable is averaged across 100s
to 1000s of trials
How does a discrete trials design differ
from a typical experiment?
A discrete trials design has no baselines and
administers the levels of the independent variable
100s to 1000s of times to each subject.
What are a discrete trials design’s benefits?

The large number of data points produced by 100s

to 1000s of trials provides a very reliable
measurement of the effect of the independent
variable.

The similarity of human sensory systems allows

researchers to generalize from a small number of
subjects.
When is a small N design appropriate?
When studying a clinical subject (a self-injurious
child) or when very few subjects are available.
When would we prefer a large N design?
A large N design would be desirable when we have
sufficient subjects and want to increase
generalizability.

The generalizability of a large N study depends on

how we select our sample since a seriously biased
sample will not represent the population.
When would we prefer a large N design?
The generalizability of a small N study depends on
repeated successful replications with different
subjects.
Why doesn't a large N study always have
greater generality than a small N study?
If a large N study’s sample is biased, we will be
unable to generalize its findings to a larger
population. Also, if it is poorly controlled, there will be
no valid findings to generalize.
Why doesn't a large N study always have
greater generality than a small N study?
In contrast, a well-controlled small N experiment
using a single subject might be successfully
replicated across sufficient subjects to generalize its
results to the population from which they were
drawn.
 END
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