Contents

282 PART IV: Applied Researchinterest or propensity to enjoy music (“musicophilia”) come from? Is it innate?What parts of the brain govern our musical abilities and appreciation? Is musicrelated to language? Sacks probes the answers to these and other questionsthrough a review of case studies of individuals with unusual musical propensities.He begins this book with the clinical story of a man who survived beinghit by lightning to find that he had developed an obsession with music. Hehad no real interest in music before this event but now found an intense cravingto hear piano music. He began listening to musical recordings and discoveredthat music kept playing in his head. He took piano lessons and began towrite his own compositions! These “clinical tales,” as Sacks calls them, not onlyprovide insights into the relationship between mind and brain, but also revealhow individuals adapt, cope, and succeed when faced with profound neurologicaldeficits. We will review the advantages and the disadvantages of thecase study method.The emphasis in a single-subject experimental design typically is on manipulationof variables and interpretation for a single subject, even if a few subjectsor a single “group” is observed. Single-subject experimental designs are alsofrequently called “N 1 experimental designs” or “small-n research designs.”These designs are characteristic of approaches called the experimental analysis ofbehavior and applied behavior analysis. As you will see, these approaches representbasic and applied applications, respectively, of a small-n approach. Singlesubjectdesigns are more systematic and controlled than are case studies. Wewill examine the rationale behind the use of these designs and provide specificillustrations of the more common single-subject experimental designs. Theseexperimental designs represent a special case of the repeated measures designintroduced in Chapter 7.THE CASE STUDY METHODKey ConceptCharacteristics• Case studies, intensive descriptions and analyses of individuals, lack thedegree of control found in small-n experimental designs.• Case studies are a source of hypotheses and ideas about normal andabnormal behavior.A case study is an intensive description and analysis of a single individual.Case studies frequently make use of qualitative data, but this is not alwaysthe case (e.g., Smith, Harré, & Van Langenhove, 1995). Researchers who use thecase study method obtain their data from several sources, including naturalisticobservation and archival records (Chapter 4), interviews, and psychologicaltests (Chapter 5). A clinical case study frequently describes the application andresults of a particular treatment. For example, a clinical case study may describean individual’s symptoms, the methods used to understand and treat the symptoms,and evidence for the treatment’s effectiveness. Thus, case studies providea potentially rich source of information about individuals.Treatment variables in clinical case studies are rarely controlled systematically.Instead, several treatments may be applied simultaneously, and the