Experimental design

What are independent groups?

When two groups of ppts are used in the experiment and each participant only takes part in one condition.

What are repeated measures?

The same ppts are allocated to all groups ( take part in all conditions)

What is matched pairs?

Ppts only take part in one condition but are paired with someone else in the other condition who shares characteristics (e.g age, gender and intelligence)

What are order effects? And the two types

Occurs in repeated measures.

• refers to the order of the conditions having an effect on the ppts behaviour

• Practice effects - performance in the second condition could be better because they know what to do

• Fatigue effects - performance could be worse in the second as they may be tired

What is counterbalancing?

Splits ppts in half into two groups, on half do condition A the other condition B and then they do the condition which they haven’t done yet

• the ppts haven’t done the conditions in the same order which reduce order effects. (Doesn’t remove)