Signal detection theory and vestibular perception: III. Estimating unbiased fit parameters for psychometric functions.

ABSTRACT: Psychophysics generally relies on estimating a subject's ability to perform a specific task as a function of an observed stimulus. For threshold studies, the fitted functions are called psychometric functions. While fitting psychometric functions to data acquired using adaptive sampling procedures (e.g., "staircase" procedures), investigators have encountered a bias in the spread ("slope" or "threshold") parameter that has been attributed to the serial dependency of the adaptive data. Using simulations, we confirm this bias for cumulative Gaussian parametric maximum likelihood fits on data collected via adaptive sampling procedures, and then present a bias-reduced maximum likelihood fit that substantially reduces the bias without reducing the precision of the spread parameter estimate and

SUBMITTER: Chaudhuri SE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3570703 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature