Hi all,

I have been advised to learn and use the new procedure in SPSS, linear
autoregressive mixed models.  I have looked at what docs are
available, and I'm having trouble understanding when I can use this
analysis:

In this psychology experiment on exectuive processing, subjects say
whether consecutive numbers presented on screen are odd/even (OE), or
>5/<5 (HL). Sometimes the same task is performed on consecutive trials
and sometimes subjects switch from one to the other. On trials
following a switch, RT is slower, and this switch cost is thought to
reflect executive processes redirecting attention between tasks. On
some trials we have them perform the task on a number in memory rather
than the one onscreen. So we have a repeated measures, 2x2x2 design. N
= 20 in all cells. Order of trials randomized. Additionally, we record
the trialnumber as a non-factor, for purposes of record-keeping.
Data looks like:

subject switch? task    intern? trial#  ReactionTime(DV)
1       N       OE      I       1       854
1       S       OE      E       2       456
1       S       HL      E       3       657
1       S       OE      I       4       767
1       N       HL      I       5       645
.       .       .       .       .       .
.       .       .       .       .       .
.       .       .       .       .       .
1       S       OE      E       160     675

2       N       OE      I       1       576
2       S       OE      E       2       756
2       S       HL      E       3       654
2       S       OE      I       4       879
2       N       HL      I       5       459
.       .       .       .       .       .
.       .       .       .       .       .
.       .       .       .       .       .
2       S       OE      E       160     765

and so on for each subject.

We are interested in two approaches:

i) what are main effects and interactions of switch, task, and intern?

ii) it may be that performance degrades over time due to fatigue. The
counterbalanced order should take care of this to an extent, but it
would be nice to know how performance changed over time. More
importantly it would be good to know if change over time was different
in different cells.

I suspect a mixed models autoregression approach using trial as an
index might be called for in ii), but is it OK to use the same
analysis for question i) which is not concerned with change over time?
Is this type of analysis ONLY appropriate when the time covariate is
involved?

No doubt I have munged the terminology and confabulated terms from
SPSS with actual statistical terms, my apology. One reason I would
like to use the mixed models approach on i) if possible is not really
statistical, it would save enormous time as (I think) it obviates the
necessity of reoragnizing the entire data file into the structure
required by SPSS for repeated measures analyses, and since I will be
doing many such analyses, the savings would amount to days at least. 

Thanks for any pointers....

Jim





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