The Subject-Experimenter Contract A Reexamination of Subjec.docx
Jennifer Afana's Honors Thesis
1. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 1
Abstract
This study examines experimenter expectancy effects on memory accuracy and
memory confidence. It is an extension of a classic study by Stanton and Baker (1942).
Each participant viewed a series of shapes, completed a filler task, and then engaged in a
one-on-one interview with a research assistant to test his or her memory for the shapes.
Without the research assistant’s knowledge, only half or one-third of the answers on their
answer sheets were correctly keyed. The results assess the extent to which the
expectations of the experimenter can affect a person’s memory decisions and confidence
in those memory decisions. In this study the experimenters’ expectations did not have an
effect on the accuracy of participants’ memory decisions, but they did have a significant
effect on the participants’ confidence in their correct answers. The results have real-world
implications for eyewitness identification lineups. In such circumstances the police
typically have expectations about the guilt of the suspect, and those expectations may
also be inadvertently communicated to the witness.
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Experimenter Expectations and the Accuracy and Confidence of Memory
For a long time we have known, through psychological research, that one person’s
expectations can affect another person’s behavior (from Rosenthal, 1978). This principle
has important implications for research because an experimenter’s expectations can also
influence or bias the behavior of the experimental participants. Experimenter expectancy
effects have been shown time and time again through various experiments. For instance,
Rosenthal and Fode conducted a study in which rats ran mazes and were tested on their
learning ability (1963). However, the real participants in the study were not the rats, but
the experimenters running the study. Some of experimenters were told that their rats were
“bright” or intelligent, while others were told that their rats were “dull” or unintelligent.
In reality, the rats were just randomly assigned into each category. However, the labels
“bright” and “dull” likely created an expectation among the experimenters. The
experimenters in the “bright” rat condition may have expected their rats to improve on
the maze learning task, while the experimenters in the “dull” condition may have
expected their rats to not improve on the maze learning task. And that is exactly what the
results showed, even though the two groups of rats were determined randomly.
This study prompted a similar experiment by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968).
However this particular experiment was conducted in the real world setting -- in a
classroom with teachers and students. Students took an intelligence test that measured for
“intellectual blooming”. The teachers were told that they should expect enhanced
performance from some of their students, classifying some as brighter than others. Again,
these labels were just randomly assigned. The children were administered an intelligence
test at the end of the term, and once again the results suggested that teachers’
4. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 4
expectations influenced the children’s performance on the test. The “gifted” children
scored higher on the intelligence test than the rest of the children.
Expectancy effects extend well beyond the confines of laboratories and classroom
settings. Rosenthal (2002) explains that these expectation trends are also found in work
organizations (Kierein & Gold, 2000), judges’ beliefs about the guilt of a defendant
(Blanck, Rosenthal, Hart, & Bernieri, 1990; Halverson, Hallahan, Hart, & Rosenthal,
1997), and even in the health care setting such as nursing homes for the elderly
(Learman, Avorn, Everitt, & Rosenthal, 1990). Rosenthal and Rubin (1978) examined
345 studies in which experimenters’ expectancies influenced experimental results. This
research ranged from reaction time to animal learning, and even to everyday life
situations. Overall, research has shown this to be a very consistent and robust effect in
various settings.
These experimenter expectancy effects not only have important implications for
research and everyday life events, but profound implications for the justice system.
Eyewitness identification errors are the primary cause of wrongful convictions in the
United States. In about 75% of exonerations based on DNA evidence the original
conviction was due to mistaken eyewitness identification (www.innocenceproject.org,
last visited May 30, 2013). One source of these eyewitness errors may be the expectations
of the police who administer the lineup. To avoid this bias effect, Wells, Small, Penrod,
Fulero, Malpass, and Brimacombe (1998) recommended that lineups should be double-
blind, meaning that the police officer administering the lineup should not know the
position of the suspect in the lineup. The problem of police officers’ expectations is
illustrated in an experiment by Greathouse and Kovera (2009). They presented
5. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 5
participants with a staged crime and then later asked those participants to identify the
person who committed the staged crime from a lineup. Some of the lineup administrators
were blind as to the position of the suspect and others were not blind, meaning they knew
which person in the lineup was the suspect. Their results were mixed. In some conditions,
the suspect identification rates were higher, whereas in other conditions they were not.
They also examined how administrators’ expectations affected the witness’s confidence.
The witnesses were less confident in their identifications when the lineup administrator
knew the position of the suspect than when the lineup administrator did not know the
position of the suspect.
The Greathouse and Kovera experiment addresses a fundamental question about
how experimenters’ expectations can affect memory. Stanton and Baker (1942) measured
just that. They conducted their experiment by showing participants a series of random
shapes and testing the participants’ memory by showing them the original shape and its
mirror-image. During this memory test all of the experimenters were provided with an
answer key, thus giving the experimenters expectations as to which answers the
participants should choose. However before running the experiment, the administrators
were informed about experimenter bias and that they should refrain from any suggestive
behavior. Without their knowledge, only half of the answers were keyed correctly. The
results showed that the participants followed the experimenters even when the answers
were actually incorrect, suggesting that they were influenced by the experimenters’
beliefs even after being informed of experimenter bias. The Stanton and Baker (1942)
study has only been replicated twice (Friedman, 1942; Lindzey, 1951). Friedman (1942)
showed a very slight (.614 versus .610), and statistically non-significant accuracy
6. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 6
advantage when participants’ responses were consistent with the experimenter’s
expectations. This same experimental procedure was replicated again by Lindzey, only
to find that there was again only a slight difference in accuracy whether the experimenter
had the answer correct or not (1951). The differences were not statistically significant and
therefore the null hypothesis could not be rejected. Neither one of the replicated studies
provides compelling evidence that experimenter expectancy effects have an impact on
memory, as was found by Stanton and Baker (1942). Lindzey (1951) pointed out that one
potential flaw in the Stanton and Baker (1942) study was that the participants may have
been able to see the administrators’ answer key. In other words, the participants may have
simply seen the answers and responded “correctly” due to the fact that they saw the
answers, not because they were influenced by the experimenters’ suggestiveness or
biased behavior. This could be a reason as to why the replications were inconsistent. So
the question still remains, how does experimenter bias affect eyewitness lineups?
The Current Study
There have been very few studies that examined the accuracy and confidence of
witnesses’ memory when both biased and unbiased administrators presented a lineup.
The current study is a replication and extension of Stanton and Baker (1942). We wanted
to examine how accurate participants were in their memory of stimuli when the
experimenters had skewed answer keys. In addition, we also wanted to see how confident
participants were in their choices with these experimenter expectancy effects.
7. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 7
Predictions
There are two predictions. First, to the extent that experimenter expectancy can
influence memory decisions, participants should be more likely to recognize stimuli that
the experimenters had believed were correct than stimuli that experimenters believed
were incorrect. Second, the same subtle cues that communicate the experimenter’s
expectations about the “correct” responses might also influence participants’ confidence
in those responses. To the extent that this holds, participants would have lower
confidence when the answers were marked as correct on the experimenters’ answer sheet
than when they were marked incorrect. Thus, the participant may know that the
experimenter believes that “A” is the correct answer, and they may choose “A” as their
answer, but they may not be completely convinced that it is the correct choice, resulting
in a decrease in confidence. Similarly, participants may show increased confidence on
trials where their response is consistent with the expectations of the experimenter.
METHOD
Participants
The experiment included 64 undergraduate students from the University of
California Riverside who participated for one hour in exchange for one course credit. The
mean age was 19.5 (SD= 1.34). Exactly half of the participants were male and the other
half were female. The demographics breakdown was 48.4% Asian, 29.7% Hispanic,
10.9% Caucasian, 7.8% Middle Eastern, and 3.1% African American.
8. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 8
Materials
A brief power point presentation was created for the purpose of this study in order
to tests participants’ memory. A total of twelve images were sequentially presented on a
computer screen. The stimulus shapes are shown in Appendix A. Each image was
presented for five seconds followed by a blank frame for half a second then the next
image was shown. This sequence continued for all twelve images. There were two
versions of the study slide sequence, one of which simply included the mirror images of
the other.
The Big Five Inventory (BFI) (John, 1999), which measures participants
personality traits, was used as a filler task. The BFI is a 44-item scale ranging from 1
(strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). It uses accessible vocabulary to determine the
main five personality traits. This measure includes items such as: “Is depressed; Does a
thorough job; Is full of energy.” This may be analyzed later on to determine if personality
has an effect on the memory and confidence of participants, but will not be discussed in
the present study. Since this BFI task is relatively short, averaging about 3 minutes to
complete, subjects were also given a page of math problems to work on as well until five
minutes had passed.
Eight research assistants, four female and four male, were recruited to collect the
data. Each of the research assistants was provided with his or her own set of eight by
eleven note-cards that contained the stimulus shapes from the power points. Each set
consisted of 24 images, 12 being the images the participants saw in the power point
presented, and the other 12 their mirror-image. Each notecard only consisted of one
image. Directly underneath each stimulus shape pair (image presented and its mirror
9. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 9
image) one was labeled “A” while the other was labeled “B”. Each research assistant was
assigned a power point slide set as well as his or her own answer key. Four of the
experimenters had half of their answer sheet keyed incorrectly, while the other four had
one-third of their answers keyed incorrectly. There were two different answer keys for
each study slide sequence; one containing a series of answers and the other the exact
inverse of those answers. For example, if power point one’s first answer key had A,A,B
as the first three correct answers, then the second answer key for power point one would
be B,B,A and so on. This same method was also used for the second power point.
Afterwards, an online demographics questionnaire was created to collect generic
information about each participant including questions such as their age, ethnicity, and
sex.
Procedure
One psychology research assistant and one participant were present during each
session. Each research assistant began by jotting down the participant’s subject number
and name. The participant was then given an informed consent form to sign before
participating in the study. Next, the research assistant set up the assigned test stimuli
(either slide set 1 or 2), read the instructions, and left the room while the power point was
presented to the participant. The participants were then given a five minute filler task
consisting of the BFI and a series of math equations. The participants were instructed to
first complete the BFI and afterwards continue onto the math problems until the research
assistant instructed them to stop.
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After the research assistant presented the test stimuli and the participant
completed the five minute filler task, an “interview” between the research assistant and
participant took place. The research assistant presented a two-alternative forced-choice
memory test to the participant and then gave the participants some instructions on how to
complete the test. “I am going to show you two images at a time. One will be the same
image you previously saw in the power point presentation, while the other is its mirror
image…” The participant’s task on each trial was to determine which of the two test
stimuli was the one previously seen. An example of one of the test trials is shown in
Appendix B.
The research assistants were not given exact instructions on how to present the
stimuli. For instance, one research assistant may have placed a certain image down prior
to the other or closer to the participant, in which this suggestive behavior could bias the
results. Whereas in another scenario the research assistant may have placed them down at
the same time or directly side by side. The research assistants were only told to present
the two images simultaneously, the image the participant previously saw and its mirror-
image, in a distinct order. Each eight by eleven notecard was numbered on the back [i.e.
both cards in each pair consisted of the same number n1, and the next pair n2 and so
on…] as to not mix the order. Once the participants made their decisions (by choosing
either A or B) the research assistants marked it on their subjects answer sheets, which had
columns for all of their participants as well as the corresponding “correct” answers (see
Appendix C). After each decision was made the research assistants also asked the
participants how confident they were in the answer choice on a scale of one (not very
confident) to four (very confident).
11. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 11
After the memory test the participants filled out the online demographics page.
When this was complete the research assistants went through a verbal agreement with the
participants and were told not to discuss this study with others and were then debriefed.
RESULTS
Memory Accuracy
An average of the participants’ accuracy was calculated for the one-half
incorrectly keyed conditions and one-third incorrectly keyed conditions. In the case
where half of the experimenters’ answers were miskeyed, participants got the answers
correct when the experimenters believed the answers to be correct an average of .672.
When the participants got the answers correct but the experimenters believed the answers
to be incorrect, the participants were accurate about .661 of the time. This small
difference in accuracy was not statistically significant, t (31) = .247, p = .807, r =.044.
The one-third incorrect condition had a .613 accuracy when the participants got the
answers correct and the experimenters believed the answers were correct. On the other
hand, participants scored an average of .594 when the participants got the answers correct
but the experimenters believed the answers were incorrect. Similar to the one-half
incorrect condition, the averages for the two groups did not have much variation thus
yielding insignificant results, t (31) = .357, p = .724, r = .064.
Memory Confidence
Participants had a 2.971 average confidence rating when they got the answers
correct when the experimenters also believed them to be correct. However, the
12. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 12
confidence significantly dropped to 2.535 when the participants got the answers correct
but the experimenters believed the answers were incorrect. This decrease was statistically
significant, t (31) = 2.730, p = .010, r = .440. There was very little change in confidence
when the participants got the answers incorrect; the averages remained consistently low.
The participants got the answers wrong when the experimenters correctly believed they
were wrong with an average 2.070 confidence rating, but slightly decreased to 1.945
when the participants got the answers incorrect and the experimenters incorrectly
believed the answers were right. This slight decrease was not statistically significant, t
(31) = .589, p = .560, r = .105.
As for the confidence in the one-third incorrect condition, we did not find any
effects between the conditions where the participants got the answers correct when the
experimenters believed them to be correct (2.523) and when the participants got the
answers correct when the experimenters believed the answers were incorrect (2.458), t
(31) = .387, p = .701, r = .069. Consistent with the one-half incorrectly keyed condition,
the participants had a fairly low confidence when they got the answers incorrect t (31) =
.180, p = .858, r = .032. When the participants got the answers incorrect their average
confidence was 2.039 when the experimenters also believed they were incorrect and was
2.005 when the experimenters believed the incorrect answers were correct.
DISCUSSION
One-half Incorrectly Keyed Condition
We were expecting some variation in the participants’ accuracy depending on
whether the experimenters had the answers correctly keyed versus incorrectly keyed.
That pattern of results was not obtained. Instead we found that when half of the answer
13. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 13
key was incorrect, the participants’ accuracy levels were about the same whether the
experimenter had the answers correctly keyed or not. Although we did not find any
change in the accuracy of the participants’ responses, we did find an effect on the
participants’ confidence of their answer choices when they got the answers correct.
Again, in cases in which the experimenters had one-half of their key marked incorrectly,
participants’ confidence levels were fairly high when they got the answer correct and the
experimenters believed the answers to be correct. However that number significantly
dropped when the participants still got the answers correct but the experimenters believed
their answers to be incorrect. This suggests that the experimenters’ beliefs and
expectations were conveyed to the participants, but that they had an effect on confidence
rather than accuracy.
Even though the participants may not have changed their answers because of the
experimenters’ suggestive behavior, they did show an increase in confidence when their
answers matched the expectations of the experimenters and a decrease in confidence of
their answer when their choices did not match the expectations of the experimenters. This
was only in the cases where the participants got the answers correct. There was no
difference in confidence when the participants got the answer incorrect; the participants’
confidence remained consistently low whether the experimenter believed the answer to
be correct or incorrect when it actually was incorrect. This may reflect that the
participants had some sort of intuition that they knew they were unsure of their answer.
14. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 14
One-third Incorrectly Keyed Condition
The memory accuracy of the participants in the one-third incorrectly keyed
condition yielded strange results. It would be assumed that if the experimenters had more
correct than incorrect answers on their answer sheet they would obtain better results since
the participants’ memory would be more likely to match the experimenters’ expectations
than when it does not. However this result was not observed. The participants did worse
when the majority of the answers were keyed correctly than when only half of the
answers were keyed correctly. This could be explained by a various number of reasons.
In other words, the students may have played the negative-participant role, which means
that the participant caught onto the experimenter’s hypothesis and actively attempted to
disprove it. On the other hand it could have had nothing to do with the participants
actions, but instead with the research assistants’ behavior. Since most of the
experimenters were undergraduate psychology students, they knew of experimenter bias
and its effects in the laboratory setting. It could have been just mere coincidence that the
research assistants in the one-third incorrect condition were less susceptible in conveying
their expectations to the participants than the researchers in the one-half incorrect
condition.
It is also possible that these unexpected results did not have to do with the
experimenters or the participants’ behavior, but instead with the positioning of the
stimulus images. The order of the stimulus images were the same in each condition,
however there were two different power points, one contacting a series of images and the
other containing the exact inverse of each image. There were also two different answer
keys for each set of power points, resulting in a total of four different answer keys. It
15. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 15
could have been that when certain images were depicted a particular way they may have
been more easily recognized than when they were portrayed in the opposing direction
(see appendix B). Another potential reason could be that there may be fewer
opportunities for experimenters to convey their violated expectations when only one-third
of the items are miskeyed. After all, their expectations are only violated on a very small
number of trials. Experimenters may not react when their expectations are violated
infrequently, but may be more likely to react, or to have a stronger reaction, when their
expectations are violated more often.
The present results are consistent with previous findings, by Friedman (1942) and
by Lindzey (1951), showing virtually no effect of experimenter expectations on memory
accuracy. How do we reconcile these null effects of experimenter expectations with the
broader literature showing robust effects of experimenter expectations? We consider two
ways in which the present experiment differs from some of the previous studies on
experimenter expectancy effects. The key effects can be seen by comparing the present
study to the Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) study. One major difference between the two
studies is the amount of time that the experimenters and participants spent together. The
participants in our study spent much less time with our experimenters than the students
did with their teachers in the Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) study. Thus, expectation
effects may develop over time through extended interaction. Another difference is that
our experimenters had different expectations than the teachers. The teachers expected
their “bright” students to be smarter than their other students; therefore they treated them
as if they were smarter. However, our experimenters’ expectations were not based on the
16. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 16
individuals, but were based on the answer keys and whether the participants got the
answer correct or incorrect.
Limitations & Future Research
One of the limitations is that all of the participants are college students around the
ages of 17 to 24. This may have yielded different results than it would in the real world
setting because many actual witnesses may not be in that age frame. Another factor that
could play a role is that all of the students who participated are taking a psychology
course and may have learned about experimenter bias and its effects prior to participating
in the experiment. This could have influenced the participants answer choices in making
them less susceptible to being influenced. Thus it may be beneficial to do this experiment
within the general population to see if they behave in a different manner.
The research assistants were not given clear instructions on how to present the
stimuli to the participants. We sought to examine the extent to which different
administrators influenced their participants. Each research assistant had his or her own
style of presenting the stimuli and phrasing questions while administering the two-
alternative forced choice memory test. This is a possible reason as to why the research
assistants had varied numbers of correct and incorrect responses from their participants.
The varied results could also be due to each administrator receiving a different power
point slides and answer sheets due to the positioning of each shape.
We assume that each researcher had his or her own flair while presenting the
stimulus images to each of the subjects, but we are not certain exactly what they did since
they were not given specific instructions nor were they observed. It may be helpful to
17. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 17
examine how different methods of presentation style affect participants’ decisions. For
instance each research assistant could be assigned to a different type of method in how to
present the stimuli. If this were case, however, the same images should be presented to
each participant and all of the answer keys should be consistent in order to measure the
effect size in the different types of styles. Different methods may be better than others in
that they have less suggestive behavior, thus less biasing effects on the participants, or in
the real world, in eyewitness identifications.
Conclusion
Although an abundant amount of research has been conducted on experimenter
bias effects, there has only been one published study on administrator expectancy effects
in eyewitness lineups that examined accuracy and confidence in memory (Greathouse &
Kovera 2009). Therefore further research is needed to better understand administrator
bias and their effects on eyewitness lineups and its role in the justice system.
Acknowledgements I would like to thank my mentor Steven Clark for putting in a
considerable amount of time and effort in helping me throughout this entire process. I
would also like to give thanks to the graduate students Rakel Larson, Molly Moreland,
Ryan Rush, Candace Rim, and Marie Hicks for giving me advice and feedback along the
way, as well as the undergraduate students, Ryan Hiroto, Chul Park, Delilah Maestas,
Emily Cadegan, Nathan Martinez, Welby Huynh, Renee Tiet, and Rita Saikali for helping
collecting data. I would not have been able to accomplish this without the help of my
supportive lab.
18. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 18
References
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Greathouse, S. M., Kovera, M. B. (2009). Instruction bias and lineup presentation
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Lindzey, G. (1951). A note on interviewer bias. Journal of Applied Psychology, 35(3),
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albino rat. Behavioral Science, 8, 183-189.Rosenthal, R.; Jacobson, L. (1968).
Pygmalion in the classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation
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Table 1. The average of participants’ accuracy for the one-half correctly keyed condition
when the participants got the answer correct or incorrect when the experimenters believed
them to be correct or incorrect.
Total Averages
Experimenters Belief
Correct Incorrect
Truth
Correct .67 .66
Incorrect .33 .34
21. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 21
Table 2. The average confidence of participants for the one-half correctly keyed
condition when the participants got the answers correct or incorrect when the
experimenters believed them to be correct or incorrect.
Total Averages
Experimenters Belief
Correct Incorrect
Truth
Correct 2.97 2.53
Incorrect 1.95 2.07
22. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 22
Table 3. The average of participants’ accuracy for the one-third correctly keyed
condition when the participants got the answers correct or incorrect when the
experimenters believed them to be correct or incorrect.
Total Averages
Experimenters Belief
Correct Incorrect
Truth
Correct .613 .594
Incorrect .387 .406
23. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 23
Table 4. The average confidence of participants for the one-third correctly keyed
condition when the participants got the answers correct or incorrect when the
experimenters believed them to be correct or incorrect.
Total Averages
Experimenters Belief
Correct Incorrect
Truth
Correct 2.523 2.458
Incorrect 2.039 2.005
24. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 24
Appendicies
Appendix A. Images of the stimuli borrowed from Stanton & Baker (1942) that were
used in the power point and notecards. A mirror-image for each of these shapes was also
created for the memory test.
25. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 25
A
B
Appendix B. Examples of the two-alternative forced- choice memory test. These
stimulus shapes were on their own 8x11 notecard and were numbered on the
back to keep each pair in order.
A
B
A B
26. EXPERIMENTER BIASAND THE ACCURACY ANDCONFIDENCEOFMEMORY 26
Appendix C. This is a sample image of a research assistants’answersheet.This is where they marked the
participants answer choices and confidence levels. The left column states the stimulus number. In this
column we also had the participants copy in their “correct answers” from another page. The top row
indicates the participant number.
Subjects
SubjectResponses
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
1 A A 3
2 A B 1
3 B
A 2
4 A
5 B
6 B
7 B
8 A
9 B
10 A
11 B
12 A