SENSITIVITY OF THE ABX DISCRIMINATION TEST

Abstract

The ABX test or matching‐to‐sample is a discrimination procedure involving presentation of both test and control items, and then presentation of one of the two items as a blind sample. The third (blind sample) must then be identified correctly to match it to the one correct alternative from the inspection phase. We hypothesized that the ABX test might have an advantage over other discrimination methods due to a warm‐up effect arising from the inspection phase containing both test and control items. Furthermore, the ABX test might prove generally useful like the triangle test since it can be used when there is no specified attribute to be discriminated. The ABX test was compared to several other discrimination procedures. No advantage was observed in a variety of stimuli varying in complexity and in the difficulty of the discrimination.