Using it, a subject is presented with two consecutive stimuli -- say an image and a mild electric shock -- separated by a delay.
If a subject is presented with a "target" word such as doctor and then a "prime" word such as nurse, if the subject has a faster-than-usual response time to nurse then the experimenter may assume that word nurse in the brain had already been accessed when the word doctor was accessed.
A subject is presented with a food reward that is out of reach.
In a dichotic listening situation a subject is presented with two different syllables, one to each ear simultaneously, with instruction to report the syllable heard best.
Decision making when a subject is presented with a choice between a fixed delay to reward versus a risky delay (that is either shorter or longer with equal probability) provides a measure of impulsivity (Bateson & Kacelnik 1996, 1997; Kacelnik & Bateson 1997).
In previous studies, depression has often been lifetime depression so that it was difficult to know if depression reported by a subject was present before, during or after suicide attempts.
Each test was a 5-minute free recall test in which a subject was presented with 60 blanks on the screen and directed to type as many items as they could remember, in any order, using only 1 word to name each item.
During each 5-second trial, a subject was presented with a target face (on the top of the computer screen) and two probe faces (on the bottom of the screen) and was instructed to match the probe with the same emotional expression to the target by pressing the left or right key on a button box.
22 The data for a subject are presented as multiple 'observations', each of which applies to an interval of observation (start, stop).
This may be a low level of interpretation, of course; simply ascertaining the correct subject of a sentence where no subject is present, or inferring a verb from a prior occurrence, without going into any metaphysical speculations.
Data relating to a single subject is presented in detail here.
