References
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Exercises
- Practice: Find and read a published article in psychology that reports new single-subject research. (An archive of articles published in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis can be found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/309/) Write a short summary of the study.
- Practice: Design a simple single-subject study (using either a reversal or multiple-baseline design) to answer the following questions. Be sure to specify the treatment, operationally define the dependent variable, decide when and where the observations will be made, and so on.
- Does positive attention from a parent increase a child’s tooth-brushing behavior?
- Does self-testing while studying improve a student’s performance on weekly spelling tests?
- Does regular exercise help relieve depression?
- Practice: Create a graph that displays the hypothetical results for the study you designed in Exercise 1. Write a paragraph in which you describe what the results show. Be sure to comment on level, trend, and latency.
- Discussion: Imagine you have conducted a single-subject study showing a positive effect of a treatment on the behavior of a man with social anxiety disorder. Your research has been criticized on the grounds that it cannot be generalized to others. How could you respond to this criticism?
- Discussion: Imagine you have conducted a group study showing a positive effect of a treatment on the behavior of a group of people with social anxiety disorder, but your research has been criticized on the grounds that “average” effects cannot be generalized to individuals. How could you respond to this criticism?
- Practice: Redesign as a group study the study by Hall and his colleagues described at the beginning of this chapter, and list the strengths and weaknesses of your new study compared with the original study.
- Practice: The generation effect refers to the fact that people who generate information as they are learning it (e.g., by self-testing) recall it better later than do people who simply review information. Design a single-subject study on the generation effect applied to university students learning brain anatomy.