To illustrate, imagine a pair of research participants, Matt and Fiona.

Matt says,
perceptual sensitivity An organism’s
ability to detect a signal.
decision criteria An organism’s rule for
how much evidence it needs before
responding.
“Yes, I heard that one,” in response to most of the barely audible tones being pre-
sented by the experimenter. Fiona, in contrast, says yes to only a few of the tones, and
she insists that she couldn’t hear anything at all on the remaining test trials. One
interpretation of this pattern is that Matt has more acute hearing than Fiona does;
they differ, in other words, in their perceptual sensitivity. A different possibility,
though, is that Matt and Fiona differ only in their decision criteria—that is, in the
“cutoff” they use for deciding when to say yes and when to say no. Maybe Matt is a bit
of a risk taker. Or perhaps he has always thought of himself as having acute hearing,
and this leads him to put more trust in the vague feeling that he might have just heard
the tone. For either of these reasons, Matt may—without even realizing it—adopt an
attitude of “When in doubt, say ‘Yes, I heard that one.’” Fiona, on the other hand,
might be more cautious; or she might be worried that the experimenter will think she’s
careless if she says yes too often. To avoid this danger, she slips into a more conserva-
tive attitude: “When in doubt, say ‘No, I didn’t hear that one.’” If any of these inter-
pretations are correct, then the difference between Matt’s and Fiona’s responding
might not reflect a difference in their hearing; instead, it shows only that they handle
uncertainty in different ways.

SIGNAL-DETECTION PROCEDURES
Variations in decision criteria add a layer of extra complexity to our discussion of sensory
signal-detection theory The theory thresholds, but signal-detection theory allows us to deal with this complexity. In a
that perceiving or not perceiving a stimu- signal-detection procedure, the experimenters present a faint target stimulus on some
lus is actually a judgment about whether
a momentary sensory experience is due
trials but no stimulus on other trials. This procedure allows the experimenters to ask
to background noise alone or to the how often the participant gives each of the four possible types of response. One response
background noise plus a signal. type is a hit—the participant says, “Yes, I detected the target” when there really was one.
A second type is a false alarm—the participant says, “Yes, I detected the target” when
there was none. A third response type is a correct negative—saying “No target” when this
is in fact the correct answer. The final type is a miss—saying “No target” even though one
was actually presented (Figure 4.5).
To see how this information can be used, let’s continue with the example of Matt and
Fiona. We’ve already said that Matt has a higher hit rate than Fiona does, and we’ve
Response given
noted that this observation is, by itself, ambiguous: Perhaps Matt’s hearing is more sen-
Yes No sitive than Fiona’s, or maybe he’s just more casual in his responding and relies on a rel-
atively loose criterion. Based on hit rates alone, there’s no way to tell these possibilities
apart. A signal-detection experiment, though, provides other information, and this
Present Hit Miss
allows us to figure out what’s going on with these two participants. Let’s say that, in
Stimulus

False Correct
Absent
alarm negative
4.5 The four possible outcomes of the
detection experiment In a signal-
detection procedure, the experimenters
present a target stimulus on some trials
but no stimulus on other trials. This allows
them to ask how often the participant gives
each of the four possible types of response.
fact, Matt does have a low criterion for responding, and that’s why he usually says yes
to each of the faint signals. The same low criterion, though, will encourage Matt to say
yes even when no signal is presented; those trials, too, will often satisfy his rule of
“When in doubt, say ‘Yes, I heard that one.’” So Matt will, as we’ve said, have a high hit
rate; but he’ll also have a relatively high false-alarm rate. His responses, in other words,
will tend to be in the two cells in the left-hand column of Figure 4.5.
In contrast, let’s suppose that Matt’s hit rate is high because he really does have excel-
lent hearing and can detect each of the subtle signals. In that case, Matt probably won’t
be fooled by the stimulus-absent trials; his acute hearing will allow him to realize that
these trials contain no stimulus, and so he’ll correctly respond “no” to these trials.
Therefore, his false-alarm rate will be low, and his responses overall will accumulate in
the top left and bottom right cells of Figure 4.5.

140 chapter 4 PSENSATION O

 These points set the pattern for a signal-detection analysis. In general, if individuals
differ in how sensitive they are to the signal, then they’ll differ in their proportions of
correct and incorrect responses—their total number of hits and correct negatives rela-
tive to their total number of misses and false alarms. But if individuals differ in their
response criterion (e.g., whether they say yes when in doubt, or no), then they’ll differ
in their proportions of yes and no responses. (Of course, it’s possible for participants
to differ in both their sensitivity and their criterion; but, with a bit of algebra, we can dis-
entangle these effects from the signal-detection data.) By looking at all of the numbers,
therefore (i.e., by looking at hits, misses, false alarms, and correct negatives), we can cal-
culate two measures for each person. We can, first, measure the person’s sensitivity to the
input—and, for most purposes, this is the measure we want. Second, we can measure
the person’s criterion—and so gain a measure of how much information the person
needs before saying, “Yes, I heard it” (or saw it or smelled it or whatever).
People differ in their sensitivity for various reasons: For example, a 20-year-old’s
hearing is typically more sensitive than a 50-year-old’s because of the age-related
decline in hearing. A 20-year-old who listens to a lot of loud music will have less sen-
sitive hearing than someone who listens to quieter music, because the ear is damaged payoff matrix The pattern of benefits
by overstimulation. And so on. and costs associated with certain types
Why do people have different response criteria? The answer involves several different of responses.
factors—some of them enduring traits of the person, some of them tied to the specific
circumstances. We considered some examples in our discussion of Matt and Fiona—
for example, the possibility that Matt might just be a risk taker, or that he’s guided by
his self-confident belief that he has good hearing. Just as important is a person’s belief
about the frequency of signals. (If, for example, you believe that signals will be presented
on 98% of the trials, it makes sense to adopt a rule of “When in doubt, say ‘I heard
it’”—because this rule will lead to a correct response most of the time. If you believe, in
contrast, that signals will be presented on only 1% of the trials, it makes sense to adopt
the opposite rule.) Also crucial is the payoff matrix—the pattern of benefits and costs
associated with each type of error. Imagine Matt was trying to impress the experimenter
with his fine sense of hearing. In that case, Matt would put special weight on the
benefits associated with a hit and the costs associated with a miss. This approach would
encourage a lower criterion. Suppose Fiona, on the other hand, is worried about (A)
appearing careless; she might emphasize the costs associated with a false alarm, thus
Diagnosis
leading her to use a higher criterion.
Cancer No cancer

IMPLICATIONS OF SIGNAL DETECTION Present

Correct
Miss
diagnosis
Cancer

Signal-detection analysis is a valuable research method with applications in a wide

range of settings. Researchers have used signal detection to study cases as diverse as the
memory effects of hypnosis and the decisions made by college admissions officers. As False Correct
Absent
alarm diagnosis
just one example, consider the case presented in Figure 4.6. Here a doctor who is seek-
ing to diagnose cancer is trying to decide whether a “signal” (the illness) is present in (B)

that patient or not, and, with the problem laid out in this way, the resemblance between
4.6 Signal-detection analysis applied to
the doctor’s task and, say, Matt’s or Fiona’s—as in Figure 4.5—should be obvious.
medicine The decision options in B obvi-
Suppose we want to evaluate this doctor’s performance—maybe we’re trying to decide ously resemble those in Figure 4.5, and so
how much we can trust this particular doctor, or whether the doctor needs more train- we can think of a doctor’s task in reaching
ing. In all cases, we’d need to measure the doctor’s sensitivity to this “signal,” and we’d a diagnosis as similar to the task of some-
need to separate that sensitivity from the doctor’s criterion. To see how important this one in a sensory test. Thus, we can use the
is, imagine a doctor who diagnoses cancer in patient after patient. This might mean the logic of signal detection theory to assess
doctor is especially astute and can detect this serious problem whenever he encounters the doctor’s performance.

PPsychophysicsO 141
 it; this sounds like a doctor one should seek out. But it might also mean the doctor has
a lax criterion and offers this horrible diagnosis based on relatively thin evidence; now
this sounds like a doctor to be avoided! It would obviously be useful to know which of
these descriptions is correct, and of course this is precisely the information provided by
signal-detection analysis. (For details on how signal detection has been applied to
other domains, including medical diagnosis, see, for example, McFall & Treat, 1999;
Swets, Dawes, & Monahan, 2000.)
Signal-detection analyses highlight another crucial point: We often make decisions
with imperfect information, so it’s inevitable that we’ll make some errors. What can we
do about this? If we are especially concerned about false alarms (a cancer test that says
someone has the disease even though she doesn’t, or a jury that votes “guilty” even
though the defendant is innocent), we can take steps to raise the response criterion.
This adjustment will decrease the number of false alarms, but it’s likely to increase the
number of misses (failing to detect an actual tumor, or acquitting someone who is actu-
ally guilty). On the other hand, we could shift in the opposite direction—to a lower
criterion—but this would lead to the opposite pattern of benefit and risk: Lowering the
criterion will decrease the number of misses but increase the number of false alarms.
How should we think about these issues? That depends on the specific case—and, in
particular, the potential consequences of a miss or false alarm. Overall, though, when
we make decisions (or develop a cancer test, or instruct a jury), it’s important to remem-
ber that this trade-off between misses and false alarms is in place. If we want to evalu-
ate anything from a cancer test or a jury instruction to the memory effects of hypnosis
or the police department’s decision about whether to take a bomb threat seriously,
signal-detection analyses can provide separate measurements of sensitivity and
criterion—information that allows us to ensure that these decision processes are well
tuned to our goals.

A SURVEY OF THE SENSES

Psychophysics allows us to specify the correspondence between physical stimuli and
psychological experiences, but this is just the first step of our inquiry. We also want to
understand why this correspondence is as it is. Let’s say, for example, that we’ve learned
from psychophysics that placing a particular molecule on the tongue leads someone to
say, “Yeah, I can detect a taste—and it’s sweet. It’s chocolate!” What are the steps that
bring us from the molecule to this recognition? As our first question, we might ask how
the molecule manages to trigger a response in the nervous system at all. We’d also want
to ask why the molecule leads to a sensation of sweet, while some other molecule might
lead to a sensation of salty. And once the molecule has triggered a response in the nerv-
ous system, how does this response lead to the conscious experience of tasting a deli-
cious bit of chocolate?
To answer questions like these, notice that we need to begin with the physics of the
stimulus. From there we’ll move to electrochemistry, to examine how physical inputs
trigger events in our bodies. Next we need to ask how the nervous system analyzes and
then recognizes these incoming signals. Then, finally, we can zero in on our ultimate
target—an explanation of the conscious experience of the “chocolate” sensation; or,
with a different stimulus, the conscious experience of seeing a beautiful shade of blue.
Let’s pause to appreciate the extraordinary ambition of this project. We’re seeking to
build a bridge from events that are microscopic and objective to events that are large
scale and entirely subjective. We’re trying to specify the connections that will let us

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