Confidence Rating Procedure Research Articles

Psychophysics of associative learning: Quantitative properties of subjective contingency.

Allan and collaborators (Allan, Hannah, Crump, & Siegel, 2008; Allan, Siegel, & Tangen, 2005; Siegel, Allan, Hannah, & Crump, 2009) recently proposed to apply signal detection theory to the analysis of contingency judgment tasks. When exposed to a flow of stimuli, participants are asked to judge whether there is a contingent relation between a cue and an outcome, that is, whether the subjective cue-outcome contingency exceeds a decision threshold. In this context, we tested the following hypotheses regarding the relation between objective and subjective cue-outcome contingency: (a) The underlying distributions of subjective cue-outcome contingency are Gaussian; (b) The mean distribution of subjective contingency is a linear function of objective cue-outcome contingency; and (c) The variance in the distribution of subjective contingency is constant. The hypotheses were tested by combining a streamed-trial contingency assessment task with a confidence rating procedure. Participants were exposed to rapid flows of stimuli at the end of which they had to judge whether an outcome was more (Experiment 1) or less (Experiment 2) likely to appear following a cue and how sure they were of their judgment. We found that although Hypothesis A seems reasonable, Hypotheses B and C were not. Regarding Hypothesis B, participants were more sensitive to positive than to negative contingencies. Regarding Hypothesis C, the perceived cue-outcome contingency became more variable when the contingency became more positive or negative, but only to a slight extent. (PsycINFO Database Record

How sure are you that this is the man you saw? Child witnesses can use confidence judgments to identify a target.

We tested whether an alternative lineup procedure designed to minimize problematic influences (e.g., metacognitive development) on decision criteria could be effectively used by children and improve child eyewitness identification performance relative to a standard identification task. Five hundred sixteen children (6- to 13-year-olds) watched a video of a target reading word lists and, the next day, made confidence ratings for each lineup member or standard categorical decisions for 8 lineup members presented sequentially. Two algorithms were applied to classify confidence ratings into categorical decisions and facilitate comparisons across conditions. The classification algorithms produced accuracy rates for the confidence rating procedure that were comparable to the categorical procedure. These findings demonstrate that children can use a ratings-based procedure to discriminate between previously seen and unseen faces. In turn, this invites more nuanced and empirical consideration of ratings-based identification evidence as a probabilistic index of guilt that may attenuate problematic social influences on child witnesses' decision criteria. (PsycINFO Database Record

Evaluation and comparison of 50 Hz current threshold of electrocutaneous sensations using different methods

Leakage currents, tiny currents flowing from an everyday-life appliance through the body to the ground, can cause a non-adequate perception (called electrocutaneous sensation, ECS) or even pain and should be avoided. Safety standards for low-frequency range are based on experimental results of current thresholds of electrocutaneous sensations, which however show a wide range between about 50 microA (rms) and 1000 microA (rms). In order to be able to explain these differences, the perception threshold was measured repeatedly in experiments with test persons under identical experimental setup, but by means of different methods (measuring strategies), namely: direct adjustment, classical threshold as amperage of 50% perception probability, and confidence rating procedure of signal detection theory. The current is injected using a 1 cm2 electrode at the highly touch sensitive part of the index fingertip. These investigations show for the first time that the threshold of electrocutaneous sensations is influenced both by adaptation to the non-adequate stimulus and individual, emotional factors. Therefore, classical methods, on which the majority of the safety investigations are based, cannot be used to determine a leakage current threshold.The confidence rating procedure of the modern signal detection theory yields a value of 179.5 microA (rms) at 50 Hz power supply net frequency as the lower end of the 95% confidence range considering the variance in the investigated group. This value is expected to be free of adaptation influences, and is distinctly lower than the European limits and supports the stricter regulations of Canada and USA.

Cross-modal interactions in auditory and visual discrimination

Three experiments examined auditory–visual interactions using two sensory discrimination paradigms. Experiments 1 and 2 used a one-interval confidence-rating procedure and found modest effects of concurrent visual stimulation on auditory pitch and loudness discrimination, but little effect of auditory stimulation on visual brightness discrimination. The cross-modal interactions could have either a sensory or decisional basis. Experiment 3 used a two-interval same-different procedure and found no effect of visual stimulation on auditory sensitivity in pitch discrimination, and very little effect of auditory stimulation on visual sensitivity in brightness discrimination. Although the ensemble of results could be explained by sensory facilitation and/or inhibition that varies with the behavioral task, the pattern of these and related findings suggests instead that the cross-modal interactions result primarily from relatively late decisional processes (e.g. shifts in response criterion or ‘bias’).

Perception and production of biological movement in patients with early periventricular brain lesions

Recent neuroimaging and psychophysical findings suggest that perception and production of human body motion share a common representational network. In the present study, we address the issue of whether early disorders in production of biological movement correspond to impairment in biological motion perception. By using the simultaneous masking paradigm, we examined visual sensitivity to biological motion in adolescents (aged 13-16 years) who were born very preterm (at 27-33 gestational weeks). In a confidence rating procedure, the presence of a point-light walking figure embedded in a moving mask was judged. The participants differed in their locomotion ability, ranging from normal to a complete walking disability exhibiting signs of leg-dominated bilateral spastic cerebral palsy (BS-CP) caused by periventricular leukomalacia (PVL). Irrespective of an ability to produce movement, patients with a similar extent of PVL in the parieto-occipital complex exhibit nearly the same sensitivity to biological motion. Sensitivity correlates negatively with the extent of PVL over the parieto-occipital complex, whereas neither the severity of motor disorder nor the severity of pyramidal tract affection relate significantly to the sensitivity index. The data suggest that perception of biological motion is not substantially affected by an observer's early restrictions in body movement. Instead, the findings favour the assumption that the common network for perception and production of biological motion might be inherent for the brain. Motor experience per se does not appear to be necessary for the visual analysis of human movement.

Detection of a Point-Light Walker within a Mask: Effect of Display Orientation

How, if at all, does display orientation affect the extraction of a known structure in biological motion? A computer-generated 11-point-light walker was simultaneously masked by 66 dots that corresponded to scrambled triads of points on his limbs. At each of 5 randomly presented orientations between upright and inverted (0°, 45°, 90°, 135°, 180°), observers saw a sequence of 210 displays, half of which comprised a walker within a mask, while the rest presented only a 77-dot mask. In a confidence-rating procedure, they had to judge whether a walker was present. A sample of the target was demonstrated before each experimental sequence. ROC analyses showed that detectability decreased with changing orientation: performance began to deteriorate already at 45°. For orientations of 90°, 135°, and 180°, the ROC curves were situated close to one another. Nevertheless, given the complexity of the mask and the brief viewing period (1 s), with inversion (180°) detectability was still surprisingly high (cf Bertenthal and Pinto, 1994 Psychological Science5 221 – 225). Comparison with data on spontaneous recognition of biological motion (Pavlova, 1996 Perception25 Supplement, 6) suggests that display orientation affects bottom - up visual event processing more strongly than top - down. We consider the relative power and interrelation of processing constraints (such as axis of symmetry, dynamical constraints) in the perception of invariant structure from biological motion.

Continuous recognition memory tests: are the assumptions of the theory of signal detection met?

Two continuous recognition memory tests were administered to 20 males and 20 females using the confidence rating procedure to determine if the underlying assumptions of the theory of signal detection (TSD) are met by these tasks. Z-score transformed ROC curves proved to be straight lines parallel to the positive diagonal of the ROC graph. These findings suggest that the distributions of familiarity for old and new stimuli are normal and of equal variance for the Continuous Recognition Memory and Continuous Visual Memory Tests. TSD interpretation of test data appears to be justified.

Word length and “knowing that you know” in perceptual recognition

“Response conditional” confidence rating accuracy (Type II d’) was examined as 19 subjects listened to a list of monosyllable and trisyllable words masked by white noise. Word length added significantly to d’(p<.001) and also improved probability correct (p<.001). The interpretation that the two dependent variables (d’ and probability correct) reflect independent psychological processes was supported by Experiment II (n = 20), which substituted visual for auditory presentation but maintained the confidence rating procedure. In the case of visual presentation, long words showed a strong d’ advantage over short words (p<.001), but only a mild advantage over short words in terms of probability correct (p >.05). Overall, the effect of word length on “knowing that you know” (d’) appears to operate through the mechanism of selection constraints placed on the number of perceptual alternatives.

Interpretation of d' values obtained from a multi-target confidence-rating procedure.

Two Os made identifications and certainty ratings for five Canadian traffic signs under a theory of signal detectability confidence-rating paradigm. The data showed a strategy from the theory of signal detection for the task as a whole but not for each separate target. Rather than referring to five separate signal and noise distributions, Os apparently used a single-decision axis for their judgments. This outcome suggests the need for clarification of the meaning of individual d' values obtained by a multi-target confidence-rating procedure, based on theory of signal detectability.

Response latency, confidence, and ROCs in auditory signal detection

Response latencies were obtained from 10 Ss in auditory signal-detection experiments. The response latencies were inversely related to certainty that a signal was (or was not) presented. The S’s decision criterion was found to have an influence on response latency, which was consistent with the hypothesis that stimuli close to the current criterion elicit longer response latencies than stimuli more distant from the criterion. Comparisons among receiver operating characteristics derived from binary decisions, from the latencies of binary decisions, and from confidence ratings show that response latencies and binary decisions together yield more information about the stimulus than does the binary decision alone. However, the increment in information gained from the measurement of response latencies is in general (though not for every S) smaller than that gained by shifting from yes-no responses to a confidence-rating procedure.

Absolute sensitivity to white noise under auxiliary visual stimulation1

Absolute sensitivity to white noise was measured with the O in the dark, in constant illumination, and in the dark but with sound-synchronized flashes of light at three different intensities. A confidence rating procedure was used, and the results were analyzed in terms of the theory of signal detectability. There appeared to be no consistent effect of auxiliary visual stimulation on absolute auditory sensitivity for the four Os examined.

The detectability of the odor of butanol

Three experiments were conducted to measure the sensitivity of two Ss to the odor of butanol. In the first two experiments, the method of double random, yes-no staircases was used. A practice effect of over a log10 unit in millimoles decrease in apparent threshold was observed in both Ss. Consistent shifts in the response criterion were induced when Ss were paid to meet an arbitrarily determined physical criterion. In Experiment S, the confidence rating procedure was used. Results at eight different signal intensities are of the form predicted by signal detection theory. d’ is shown to be related to signal strength by a power function with a slope of about .30 which suggests that the olfactory transducer compresses sensory input produced by weak concentrations of butanol.

Modality effects in short-term memory: storage or retrieval?

2 experiments were conducted to determine whether the superiority of auditory to visual presentation was due to differences in storage or in retrieval from short-term memory (STM). The 1st experiment compared recognition and recall with serial lists, under the presumption that retrieval difficulties would be minimized or eliminated with a recognition procedure. The 2nd experiment utilized a confidence-rating procedure (test for knowledge of list membership) which eliminated the need for sequential dependencies. The superiority of auditory presentation was manifest in both experiments, and the conclusion was suggested that modality effects represent differences in storage. In two prior studies (Murdock, 1966b; 1967) it was shown that, with a probe technique in short-term memory (STM), retention of both serial and paired-associate material was better with auditory than with visual presentation. Even though informationally speaking the material was exactly the same (common English words) and the conditions were equated as carefully as possible, still the differences were large and striking. This paper reports two further experiments which attempt to determine whether the locus of the effect is in storage or retrieval. It is generally accepted that retrieval