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. 2013 May 8;8(5):e63441. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0063441

Figure 1. Experimental design.

Figure 1

The figure shows two exemplary experimental trials (A, B) and the factorial nature of the design (C). (A) illustrates the laughter type categorization task (CAT) where the participants had to decide which type of laughter they heard: the trial starts with the presentation of a laughter sequence (here: joyful laughter, JOY) followed by a response scale with the three laughter type categories (“Freude” = JOY; “Kitzel” = tickling laughter, TIC; “Hohn” = taunting laughter, TAU) and a variable inter-trial interval. (B) exemplifies the laughter bout counting task (COU) where the participants had to decide of how many laughter bouts the laughter sequence consisted: the laughter sequence (here: TIC) is followed by a response scale with three response categories (“3″, “4″, “W” = any other number of laughter bouts) and the inter-trial interval. Durations on the time axis indicate durations of the stimulus presentation, response window and inter-trial interval. (C) Experimental design: an equal number (n = 20) of JOY, TAU and TIC stimuli are each presented under two task conditions (CAT, COU) leading to total number of 120 trials within an orthogonal factorial design.