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Using Trials

trials.Rmd

In many situations, behaviour is collected in trials. For this reason, we have provided trials in wombats and the align_trials parameter in geom_ethogram().

Understanding Trials

Let’s explore the nature of the dataset. This is how it looks like when not visualizing trials.

ggplot(wombats, 
       aes(x=seconds, 
           y = wombat, 
           behaviour = behaviour,
           color=behaviour)) +
  geom_ethogram() 
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.

Here’s when we facet by trial:

ggplot(wombats, 
       aes(x=seconds, 
           y = wombat, 
           behaviour = behaviour,
           color = behaviour)) +
  geom_ethogram() +
  facet_wrap(~trial)
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.

We can now see the issue: the trials were collected with a continuous clock and we would like to align them to common time (i.e., have all trials start at zero). This is when align_trials comes handy:

ggplot(wombats, 
       aes(x=seconds, 
           y = wombat, 
           behaviour = behaviour,
           color = behaviour)) +
  geom_ethogram(align_trials=TRUE) +
  facet_wrap(~trial)
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.

Here’s an another example. Let’s say we wanted to facet by wombat and have trial be on the y axis instead.

ggplot(wombats, 
       aes(x=seconds, 
           y = trial, 
           behaviour = behaviour,
           color = behaviour)) +
    geom_ethogram() +
    facet_wrap(~wombat)
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.

We can easily align trials again using align_trials=T:

ggplot(wombats, 
       aes(x=seconds, 
           y = trial, 
           behaviour = behaviour,
           color = behaviour)) +
    geom_ethogram(align_trials = T) +
    facet_wrap(~wombat)
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.
#> ℹ No observation interval provided, using guessed interval 5.

Summary

In this article, we have covered basic functionality of aligning trials by using the align_trials argument.

Session Info 

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