Search results for "Psychophysic"
showing 10 items of 97 documents
Small-sample characterization of stochastic approximation staircases in forced-choice adaptive threshold estimation
2007
Despite the widespread use of up—down staircases in adaptive threshold estimation, their efficiency and usability in forced-choice experiments has been recently debated. In this study, simulation techniques were used to determine the small-sample convergence properties of stochastic approximation (SA) staircases as a function of several experimental parameters. We found that satisfying some general requirements (use of the accelerated SA algorithm, clear suprathreshold initial stimulus intensity, large initial step size) the convergence was accurate independently of the spread of the underlying psychometric function. SA staircases were also reliable for targeting percent-correct levels far …
Adequate number of consumers in a liking test. Insights from resampling in seven studies
2014
The recommended number of consumers to be enrolled in a hedonic test comparing several products usually ranges from 50 to 100, at least if no liking segmentation is sought. This paper seeks to examine whether such a panel size range is adequate, by means of 7 trials with different levels of product space complexity. Five types of products were tested: Two varied in fattiness and sweetness and were tested under the same conditions in two separate laboratories (4 trials); the remaining three, varying in taste and texture, were each tested in a different laboratory (3 trials). Each of the 7 trials was run by a different laboratory. Each of the seven laboratories enrolled in its trial 150 consu…
Separate processing of “color” and “brightness” in goldfish
1991
Spectral sensitivity was measured under different adaptation levels using a behavioral training technique in which the fish had to discriminate between a dark test field and a test field illuminated with monochromatic light. Depending on which of the two test fields was used as training test field, two functions were obtained which differ (1) in absolute sensitivity and (2) in shape. When trained on the dark test field, the fish seems to discriminate on the basis of a "color" cue, but it uses a "brightness" cue when trained on the illuminated test field. This was concluded from measurements of wavelength discrimination. Under low levels of the adaptation light (1.5 and 0.2 lx instead of 20 …
Space information is important for reading
2009
AbstractReading a text without spaces in an alphabetic language causes disruption at the levels of word identification and eye movement control. In the present experiment, we examined how word discriminability affects the pattern of eye movements when reading unspaced text in an alphabetic language. More specifically, we designed an experiment in which participants read three types of sentences: normally written sentences, regular unspaced sentences, and alternatingbold unspaced sentences. Although there was a reading cost in the unspaced sentences relative to the normally written sentences, this cost was much smaller in alternatingbold unspaced sentences than in regular unspaced sentences.
In praise of artifice reloaded: Caution with natural image databases in modeling vision
2019
Subjective image quality databases are a major source of raw data on how the visual system works in naturalistic environments. These databases describe the sensitivity of many observers to a wide range of distortions of different nature and intensity seen on top of a variety of natural images. Data of this kind seems to open a number of possibilities for the vision scientist to check the models in realistic scenarios. However, while these natural databases are great benchmarks for models developed in some other way (e.g., by using the well-controlled artificial stimuli of traditional psychophysics), they should be carefully used when trying to fit vision models. Given the high dimensionalit…
Fashion versus perception: the impact of surface lightness on the perceived dimensions of interior space.
2011
Objectives: We compare expert opinion with perceptual judgment regarding the influence of color on the perceived height and width of interior rooms. Background: We hypothesize that contrary to popular belief, ceiling and wall lightness have additive effects on perceived height, whereas the lightness contrast between these surfaces is less important. We assessed the intuitions of architectural experts as to which surface colors maximize apparent height and compared these intuitions with psychophysical height and width estimates for rooms differing in ceiling, floor, and wall lightness. Method: Experiment 1 was a survey of architectural experts and nonexperts. Experiments 2 and 3 presented v…
Near- and Far-Surround Suppression in Human Motion Discrimination.
2018
The spatial context has strong effects on visual processing. Psychophysics and modeling studies have provided evidence that the surround context can systematically modulate the perception of center stimuli. For motion direction, these center-surround interactions are considered to come from spatio-directional interactions between direction of motion tuned neurons, which are attributed to the middle temporal (MT) area. Here, we investigated through psychophysics experiments on human subjects changes with spatial separation in center-surround inhibition and motion direction interactions. Center-surround motion repulsion effects were measured under near-and far-surround conditions. Using a sim…
Subtle Increases in Interletter Spacing Facilitate the Encoding of Words during Normal Reading
2012
BackgroundSeveral recent studies have revealed that words presented with a small increase in interletter spacing are identified faster than words presented with the default interletter spacing (i.e., w a t e r faster than water). Modeling work has shown that this advantage occurs at an early encoding level. Given the implications of this finding for the ease of reading in the new digital era, here we examined whether the beneficial effect of small increases in interletter spacing can be generalized to a normal reading situation.MethodologyWe conducted an experiment in which the participant's eyes were monitored when reading sentences varying in interletter spacing: i) sentences were present…
Global flow impacts time-to-passage judgments based on local motion cues
2011
AbstractWe assessed the effect of the coherence of optic flow on time-to-passage judgments in order to investigate the strategies that observers use when local expansion information is reduced or lacking. In the standard display, we presented a cloud of dots whose image expanded consistent with constant observer motion. The dots themselves, however, did not expand and were thus devoid of object expansion cues. Only the separations between the dots expanded. Subjects had to judge which of two colored target dots, presented at different simulated depths and lateral displacements would pass them first. Image velocities of the target dots were chosen so as to correlate with time-to-passage only…
Channel Capacity in Psychovisual Deep-Nets: Gaussianization Versus Kozachenko-Leonenko
2020
In this work, we quantify how neural networks designed from biology using no statistical training have a remarkable performance in information theoretic terms. Specifically, we address the question of the amount of information that can be extracted about the images from the different layers of psychophysically tuned deep networks. We show that analytical approaches are not possible, and we propose the use of two empirical estimators of capacity: the classical Kozachenko-Lonenko estimator and a recent estimator based on Gaussianization. Results show that networks purely based on visual psychophysics are extremely efficient in two aspects: (1) the internal representation of these networks dup…