Lab Session I:  Basic Psychophysics

 

Background:

  1. Purpose and Goals
    1. To give you some idea of what subjects experience when participating in a psychophysical threshold experiment.
    2. to gain experience in psychophysical methods and calculation of threshold under the various methods.
    3. To begin to understand how it is possible to learn about the operation of human sensory systems.
  2. Theory Of Psychophysical Methods
    1. General Goal and Philosophical Underpinning
      1. Originated by Gustav Fechner - founder, note German, immense capacity for boredom.
      2. Goal - determine lawful relationship(s) between dimensions of the physical world and resulting aspect of sensation and/or perception.

        In other words, how does changing something in a stimulus change what we experience in our perception.


        What do each of these different types of curves mean about how experiences is related to perception?
         

      3. Practical Aspect of the Approach - simplify the task and judgment of the participant, control to within an inch of it's life the physical properties of the stimulus.

        That is, know exactly what the stimulus is that you are presenting to the participant.  Have their response be something very simple so you know what it means, such as: I see something, or no, I don't see something.

    2. Measures (Threshold) or what are we trying to measure about sensation.

      There are many possible measures.  Threshold is only one.  Others will be discussed later.

      1. What is a threshold?  (Limen is Latin for threshold) - use room analogy.
      2. Absolute Threshold - Definition: the lowest sensory level that can be detected reliably.
      3. Difference Threshold (differential) - Definition: minimum stimulus change or difference from a given level that is reliably detectable. also called Just Noticeable Difference or JND.
  3. Classical Psychophysical Methods
    1. Method of Limits
      1. A set of stimulus intensities are chosen by the experimeter, say 7.  It is important that the lowest intensity is below the participants threshold and the highest is above the participants threshold. 
      2. The stimuli are presented from lowest to highest intensity or reverse.  I usually like to start from the highest intensity first since it gives participants some idea of the stimulus they are trying to detect.  These ordered presentations, either from lowest to highest or reversed, are called staircases. 
      3. After each stimulus, the participant is to report whether they heard the stimulus or not.  If starting with the greatest intensity, the participant should hear the stimulus.
      4. The staircase continues until the participant no longer responds (there are variations on this rule).  This point where the response changes is recorded.  It is sometimes called a turnaround.
      5. Then the next staircase is begun.  It is usually a staircase going in the opposite direction.
      6. The threshold is calculated as average all of the turnarounds.
    2. Method of Constant Stimuli
      1. This is similar in many ways to the Method of Limits
      2. A set of stimuli are developed going from below the threshold to above the threshold.  Again, say 7 stimuli are chosen.
      3. Then the stimuli are presented in a random order. 
      4. Again, the participants response is whether the stimulus is detected or not.
      5. Threshold is the stimulus intensity that was detected 50% of the time.
      6. It is often the case that no stimulus is detected exactly 50% of the time.  Then a procedure known as linear interpolation is used to estimate this stimulus value.
    3. Method of Adjustment
      1. Usually a range of stimulus intensities, or values, are available, often continuous or near continuous.
      2. The stimulus intensity is controlled by the participant (either directly or via experimenter).
      3. The participants task is to move the stimulus to their threshold.  The participant is often instructed to the stimulus until just can or just cannot detect the stimulus in an absolute threshold experiment.
      4. The starting point is chosen randomly and the procedure is repeated several times.
      5. The threshold is the average of the final settings.
    4. Limitations of Classical Methods
      1. Can you think of Any?
      2. consider ways that the data may be not accurate or
      3. ways that the subjects behavior might lead to an incorrect measure of threshold?

Tasks Due for Next Week:

  1. Do the following experiments from Chapter 2 on ISLE:
    1. Method of Limits : Dot Threshold
      1. Leave Stimulus Settings alone
      2. Adjust the following Method Settings
        1. Number of Levels of Relative Dot Luminance: 7
        2. Number of Staircases: 14
    2. Method of Constant Stimuli : Dot Threshold
      1. Leave Stimulus Settings Alone
      2. Adjust the following Method Settings
        1. Type of Method of Constant Stimuli: Traditional
        2. Number of Levels of Relative Dot Luminance: 7
        3. Number of Repetitions: 7
    3. Method of Adjustment : Dot Threshold
      1. Leave Stimulus Settings Alone
      2. Adjust the Following Method Settings
        1. Number of Trials: 20
        2. Range of Variation: 50%
        3. Leave Minimum and Maximum Values of Stimulus alone
  2. Problems:
    1. This is what will be required for this lab. But, it is part of next week's lab assignment.
    2. Determine the threshold for each method (in some cases, the computer might calculate it for you)
    3. Use Linear Interpolations for Method of Constant Stimuli. 
    4. Show work.  For Method of Constant Stimuli and Forced Choice, please include all of the data from the experiment.
    5. For Method of Limits and Method of Adjustment, download data and record thresholds
    6. Enter data and thresholds on Moodle assignment
    7. Due after Next Week's Lab
    8. Point: learn basic ways of calculate threshold to be used in many other labs