Analytic Research Methods

Catalog description

This class will teach students how to apply six major non-experimental research methods used in analytic behavioral analysis. Protocol Analysis. This method is used to study patterns and changes in problem-solving and their matches to theoretical models, including computational models. Corpus Analysis. This method is used to isolate patterns of behavioral and communication usage and change, as revealed through the study of the world-wide web and large computerized databases such as CHILDES, TalkBank, or the British National Corpus. Tools here include text searches and data-mining. Conversation Analysis. This is a microanalytic method used to examine sequencing, repair, and orientation in closely transcribed recordings of spoken interactions, as made available through systems such as the CABank database, as well as recorded programs on YouTube and elsewhere. Coding Systems. This approach seeks to capture interactional and behavioral structures in writing, teaching, interview, and other interactions. Here, there will be a special emphasis on the coding of instructional interactions. Gesture Analysis. This microanalytic method seeks to track patterns in gestural and nonverbal communication, often in association with spoken messages. Profile Analysis. This approach studies differences across learners at various ages and ability levels and group differences involving aphasia, autism, stuttering, dementia, and other individual differences. Students will work with data already available from previous studies, and will also learn to collect their own new datasets. Although the data being examined have been generated through naturalistic processes, they can be analyzed quantitatively using time-series analyses, non-parametric statistics, error matrices, and neural network simulations. In these various analyses, we will also consider how behavioral patterns are shape