Abstract
Psychophysicists nearly always seek to have the observer pay full attention to the stimuli that he is to detect or discriminate. What about performance with stimuli that receive less than full attention or that may even be wholly unexpected? The probe-signal method and similar procedures permit the measurement of performance outside the focus of attention. In a typical auditory paradigm, the observer is to detect a tone at a designated frequency. On most trials the signal is presented at that frequency, but on some trials, say 25%, the signal is presented at a different frequency. Many data show that the observer detects the attended and nearby frequencies very well but misses frequencies more than about half a critical band away. For example, detection of an expected tone at 1000 Hz is 90% and at 1500 Hz is 55%. Most of the data are readily explained by a single-band model. However, when auditory space is examined, signals are found to be detected just as well from unexpected as from expected directions. Applied to vision, the probe-signal method reveals an advantage for an expected spatial frequency, spatial position, or line orientation. Other related approaches have shown strong effects of selective attention in the discrimination of consonants (da and ga) but little effect on loudness estimation. The methods permit quantitative measurements of cognitive influences on psychophysical outcomes; and despite the title, they do not require deception.
Preparation of this paper was in part supported by grants NS07270 from NIH and 86/649 from the Scientific Affairs Division of NATO.
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Scharf, B., Possamaï, CA., Bonnel, AM. (1989). Deceptive Psychophysics: The Probe-Signal Method and Focused Attention. In: Ljunggren, G., Dornic, S. (eds) Psychophysics in Action. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-74382-5_6
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