Planning an Approach to the Problem

All right. By now we've gotten through the first step of dealing with the data, that is, looking at it and determining what questions to ask. I've suggested that by this stage we will want to ask at least these four questions: 1. differences between extinction and reinforcement groups, 2. differences in tone and light groups within the extinction group, 3. behaviour during Phase I and Phase II first order trials, and 4. what happens to responding to the second order stimulus after extinction.

But what do we do now? One of the most important points to remember when addressing any problem is to take some time and plan out in advance what you are going to do. This will save a lot of frustration later on. Trust me, having a plan is good. But! It is a plan that will be open to modification if the need arises. In other words, if you notice something interesting part way through, but it wasn't in your original plan, don't be afraid to adjust the plan to meet the new information. Here's the basic plan/outline I arrived at.

1. What question should I be asking? (we've done this part)
2. For a question, what should I compare?
3. How do I collapse the data?
4. Compare the data
5. Interpret the data

You'll notice that some of these steps are phrased as questions. Not a problem, we'll deal with solving these questions as we get to them.

1. I'm going to tackle part of the question concerning differences in tone and light groups within the extinction group.

2. For this question I think I should compare a couple of things: 1. second order trials in Phase I and 2. Phase II trials. I'll address the second order trials in Phase I here.

3. I've got a lot of data here and to deal with it more effectively I should try collapsing it down. This is a relatively important step, so it is worth spending a couple of minutes thinking about it before jumping right in. What do we have? For each rat on a second order trial we have data from the CS- and CS+ stimuli and there are two observations per each stimuli. An important question here is: am I interested in the differences between the observation from the first five seconds and second five seconds of a stimulus? I would say no. Take note: justification of this point is important. Here's why: first, we have (or should have) looked at the transitions in an earlier report; right now that isn't really what we're interested in. Second, by combining the data from the first and second observations we get a larger sample size. This isn't crucial for the interpretation we're doing now, but if we were using statistical analysis it would be. So, how am I going to do collapse the data from the second order (S) trials? I will group within the stimuli (i.e., the two observations per stimuli, CS- and CS+). For example, there are 12 CS- presentations with two observations per stimulus presentation, so I'll have a total of 24 observations once I group them. I will then take and group the observations between the two rats in each extinction condition (i.e., group the data from the two Light rats and two Tone rats). This will produce 48 observations for each of the CS- and CS+ conditions.

Light Group (Extinction)

**Rat 1**
CS-
	O	R	M	P	J	H
	20	1	2	1	0	0
CS+
	O	R	M	P	J	H
	10	0	13	1	0	0

**Rat 3**
CS-
	O	R	M	P	J	H
	6	4	10	4	0	0
CS+
	O	R	M	P	J	H
	7	3	13	1	0	0

**Rats 1 and 3 Combined**
CS-
	O	R	M	P	J	H
number	26	5	12	5	0	0
percent	54	10	25	10	0	0
CS+
	O	R	M	P	J	H
number	17	3	26	2	0	0
percent	35	6	54	4	0	0

Tone Group (Extinction)

**Rat 6**
CS-
	O	R	M	P	J	H
	6	3	1	5	8	1
CS+
	O	R	M	P	J	H
	6	6	3	3	5	1

**Rat 8**
CS-
	O	R	M	P	J	H
	4	2	8	9	1	0
CS+
	O	R	M	P	J	H
1	1	13	7	2	0

**Rats 6 and 8 Combined**
CS-
	O	R	M	P	J	H
number	10	5	9	14	9	1
percent	21	10	19	29	19	2
CS+
	O	R	M	P	J	H
number	7	7	16	10	7	1
percent	15	15	33	21	15	2

4. The next step in the plan/outline is to compare this data. How might I present it clearly. I think two graphs will do the job: one for the CS- and one for the CS+.

5. Now that I can compare my data I need to do some interpretation. Really, we should be using some statistics on these data, but... (we'll get to this after Reading Week). For right now things look more or less similar. The T rats (6 & 8) are far more likely to move around than the L rats (1 & 3) and also demonstrate J and H behaviours, completely absent in the L rats. Why might this be? An important issue is, does this difference have any relevance to the results of the study? Both groups (L & T) show similar patterns in the relative degree of M behaviour (i.e., Proportionally M behaviour seems to have the same relative weighting between the L and T groups in both the CS- and CS+ conditions). And on and on. This is the Discussion section stuff.

Ok, so, I've taken you through part of one of the questions. Comparing the results from Phase II for the Extinction T and L groups can be done in a similar way. The important point of all this is to take the time to plan out what you're going to do. If you can generate a plan (remember, always make it a plan that is able to be modified) you will get into fewer problems as you go through the project.

Another point. Plan your time accordingly. Take into consideration what this (or any!) assignment is worth and budget your time! You have a limited amount of time in a day and one skill that you must learn to survive is how to manage that time effectively.

Finally, for Study 5 I am not asking for a Methods Section. The methods weren't really any different than the previous two studies, so I'll try to save you a bit of time here. Just give me the Results and Discussion sections. If you hand in a Methods Section, ok, but I won't be marking it.

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