Repeated measures ANOVA and link to mixed-effect models in R - r

Question

I have a problem when performing a two-way rm ANOVA in R on the following data (link : https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nIlFfijUm4Ib6TJoHUUNeEJnZnnNzO29):
subjectnbr is the id of the subject and blockType and linesTTL are the independent variables. RT2 is the dependent variable
I first performed the rm ANOVA through using ezANOVA with the following code:
ANOVA_RTS <- ezANOVA(
data=castRTs
, dv=RT2
, wid=subjectnbr
, within = .(blockType,linesTTL)
, type = 2
, detailed = TRUE
, return_aov = FALSE
)
ANOVA_RTS
The result is correct (I double-checked using statistica).
However, when I perform the rm ANOVA using the lme function, I do not get the same answer and I have no clue why.
There is my code:
lmeRTs <- lme(
RT2 ~ blockType*linesTTL,
random = ~1|subjectnbr/blockType/linesTTL,
data=castRTs)
anova(lmeRTs)
Here are the outputs of both ezANOVA and lme.
I hope I have been clear enough and have given you all the information needed.
I'm looking forward for your help as I am trying to figure it out for at least 4 hours!
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Here is a step-by-step example on how to reproduce ezANOVA results with nlme::lme.
The data
We read in the data and ensure that all categorical variables are factors.
# Read in data
library(tidyverse);
df <- read.csv("castRTs.csv");
df <- df %>%
mutate(
blockType = factor(blockType),
linesTTL = factor(linesTTL));
Results from ezANOVA
As a check, we reproduce the ez::ezANOVA results.
## ANOVA using ez::ezANOVA
library(ez);
model1 <- ezANOVA(
data = df,
dv = RT2,
wid = subjectnbr,
within = .(blockType, linesTTL),
type = 2,
detailed = TRUE,
return_aov = FALSE);
model1;
# $ANOVA
# Effect DFn DFd SSn SSd F p
#1 (Intercept) 1 13 2047405.6654 34886.767 762.9332235 6.260010e-13
#2 blockType 1 13 236.5412 5011.442 0.6136028 4.474711e-01
#3 linesTTL 1 13 6584.7222 7294.620 11.7348665 4.514589e-03
#4 blockType:linesTTL 1 13 1019.1854 2521.860 5.2538251 3.922784e-02
# p<.05 ges
#1 * 0.976293831
#2 0.004735442
#3 * 0.116958989
#4 * 0.020088855
Results from nlme::lme
We now run nlme::lme
## ANOVA using nlme::lme
library(nlme);
model2 <- anova(lme(
RT2 ~ blockType * linesTTL,
random = list(subjectnbr = pdBlocked(list(~1, pdIdent(~blockType - 1), pdIdent(~linesTTL - 1)))),
data = df))
model2;
# numDF denDF F-value p-value
#(Intercept) 1 39 762.9332 <.0001
#blockType 1 39 0.6136 0.4382
#linesTTL 1 39 11.7349 0.0015
#blockType:linesTTL 1 39 5.2538 0.0274
Results/conclusion
We can see that the F test results from both methods are identical. The somewhat complicated structure of the random effect definition in lme arises from the fact that you have two crossed random effects. Here "crossed" means that for every combination of blockType and linesTTL there exists an observation for every subjectnbr.
Some additional (optional) details
To understand the role of pdBlocked and pdIdent we need to take a look at the corresponding two-level mixed effect model
The predictor variables are your categorical variables blockType and linesTTL, which are generally encoded using dummy variables.
The variance-covariance matrix for the random effects can take different forms, depending on the underlying correlation structure of your random effect coefficients. To be consistent with the assumptions of a two-level repeated measure ANOVA, we must specify a block-diagonal variance-covariance matrix pdBlocked, where we create diagonal blocks for the offset ~1, and for the categorical predictor variables blockType pdIdent(~blockType - 1) and linesTTL pdIdent(~linesTTL - 1), respectively. Note that we need to subtract the offset from the last two blocks (since we've already accounted for the offset).
Some relevant/interesting resources
Pinheiro and Bates, Mixed-Effects Models in S and S-PLUS, Springer (2000)
Potvin and Schutz, Statistical power for the two-factor
repeated measures ANOVA, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 32, 347-356 (2000)
Deming Mi, How to understand and apply
mixed-effect models, Department of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt university