Habituation

Habituation studies are ones in which an experiment or phase continues until the child no longer attends (or attends less) to a particular stimulus.

In BITTSy, habituation phases terminate based on your protocol's set termination criteria - a decrease in looking relative to baseline. This, in turn, is based on the following factors:

• How many trials should be included in the baseline measure and in judging whether habituation has occurred (e.g., 3 trials, 4 trials, etc.). Note that the window SIZE (in terms of number of trials) is the same for both.

• Which trials are included in the baseline (e.g,. the FIRST three trials, or the 3 trials with LONGEST looking overall...)

• Percentage drop (e.g., the phase should end when looking has reduced by a certain percentage of baseline, such as 50% of baseline looking)

See the other pages in this section for specifics on how to set habituation criteria, reach (or not reach) habituation and proceed to another phase of the experiment, or exclude particular trials from habituation calculations that do not meet desired criteria.