The rationale of the Devan-Baker time bin analysis is that behavior may differ over the duration of a trial, such that analysis of the entire trial will not reveal significant behavior taking place at, for example, the beginning of the trial.
Time binned trials typically also allow visual inspection of data that normally precedes stats to prevent an effect from being ‘hidden’ in the overall data output (e.g., averaged 60 sec measures for a probe test) . It has been used to note effects that may have been missed in previous studies without the bin analysis. If a researcher thinks that a manipulation in a past experiment had an effect but for some reason it was not evident in the original data output, then the bin analysis could provide the temporal precision needed to unmask an effect hidden within a large data set. The original data files from an experiment could be reanalyzed to test new hypotheses, hence providing the researcher with a powerful scientific tool.
In a Morris water maze probe trial, a subject who has learned the platform position may swim directly to the learned position, but on determining that the platform is not there may start a sweeping search over the entire pool surface. In this case an analysis of the whole trial will give misleadingly low measures of spatial learning (e.g. percentage of time and path spent in the target quadrant), whereas time bin analysis will show high measures of spatial learning (e.g. a high percentage of time and path in the target quadrant) in the early part of the trial (in the first time bin), with other measures (if available) showing other search strategies in use in the later parts (bins) of the trial.
In a novel object recognition, strong interest in the novel object in the early part of the trial will be readily revealed by time bin analysis, and the relative degree of interest between the novel and familiar objects, and the remainder of the arena, can be measured separately for each time bin.
The number of time bins to split the trial into is chosen by the researcher, so as to best reveal significant differences in behavior at different times in the trial.
Date Published: Developed by Bryan Devan and Richard Baker in April 2005
MLA. Baker, M. R. “What is the Devan-Baker time bin analysis in behavioral analysis?” Behavioral Tracking Knowledgebase., June. 2017. Web. 9 June 2017. http://hvsimage.com/permalink/devan-baker-time-bin-analysis/
APA. Baker, M. R. (2017, May). What is the Devan-Baker time bin analysis in behavioral analysis?” Retrieved from http://hvsimage.com/permalink/devan-baker-time-bin-analysis/
Chicago Baker, Mark. “What is the Devan-Baker time bin analysis in behavioral analysis?”, HVSImage.com. http://hvsimage.com/permalink/devan-baker-time-bin-analysis/ (accessed June, 9, 2017).