Absolute Judgement
Absolute Judgement
- Imagine a task where you’re assigning stimuli to
categories/levels
- Stimuli range along continuum: pitches in a
piano
- Might be line lengths, tone pitches, light
intensity, texture roughness.
- Stimuli presented individually to subject in
random order
- This is called an absolute judgment task
- There are many types of absolute judgment tasks
and all of them involves assigning stimuli to
different categories.
o Stimuli may be auditory, visual, tactile,
or olfactory.
o An example of auditory stimuli are
pitches in a piano. Visual stimuli might
be line lengths or angles or size.
Absolute Judgement
- Human performance in absolute judgment task
depends on their information processing
capacity
- If there are only two stimuli, people have perfect
performance. However, if the number of stimuli
increase they start making errors.
- Based on studies, the maximum channel capacity
humans is 2.6 bits corresponding to 7 ± 2. This is
related to the capacity of a person’s working
memory.
- Start with 2 pitches (hi, lo): perfect performance
- Go to 4, people start making errors
- HT (information transfer) can be computed
- Maximum channel capacity ~2.6 bits (Miller 7
plus or minus 2)
Limited Channel Capacity
• Performance falls off after four alternatives or
remain constant for 2.6 bits. Compare Miller
Number 7 + 2
- This graph shows the relationship of information
transferred (HT) and stimulus information (HS).
- Perfect performance occurs if these two values
are equal but sadly human performance is
limited by memory capacity.
- The limit in the general population is 2.6 bits of
information.
Limit Not Sensory
- The limit of our performance is not our sensory
capacity but our working memory
- People cannot store much information inside
their brain and retrieve them efficiently.
- Our senses can make discriminations but we
cannot remember the levels or categories that
we have set.
- For example, we can discriminate different
shades of red but we cannot name and
remember them.
- Level of asymptote does not reflect sensory
limitation
- Rather working memory (STM) limitation
Channel Capacity
- The edge effect states that people are very good
at judging extreme stimuli
- Given 1800 pure tones, people can discriminate
high and low tones if comparison is done
pairwise.
o However, if there are tones in the
middle, performance is not perfect.
- Knowing this characteristic of human
performance, sorting tasks can be designed to
make use of edge effect and minimize errors.
 o Sorters can do the task at different levels
until all items had been sorted according
to extremes.
- Edge effect: stimuli located at the middle of the
range of the presented stimuli resulting to
poorer accuracy than those at the extremes.
(Shiffrin & Nosifsky, 1994)
- Edge effect happens for the 1800 pure tones due
to lowered sensitivity and not simply due to
response bias of factors
Application of Absolute Judgement
- The knowledge of absolute judgment enables a
supervisor make use of workers more efficiently
while considering their limitations.
- In a sorting task, workers should not be expected
to deliver perfect work if there are several levels.
- Sorting colors of different shades will also be
difficult for a worker unless, edge effect is used
Multidimensional Judgement
as an advantage.
- Useful for task in which worker has to sort stimuli
into levels along some physical continuum
o e.g., fruit inspection: fruit size, color,
classification of wool quality
- Asking a novice to sort into 8 levels and expecting
them to be perfect--won’t work
- Millions of color on a display – wouldn’t know
the difference
Uni- vs Multi-Dimensional Absolute Judgement
- What had been discussed previously involved
making judgment on only one dimension such as
size, pitch, length, etc. However, there are
stimuli that vary in more than one dimension.
For example, shoes can be classified according to
size and color.
- Unidimensional judgments (Ex: size)
o Stimuli vary along one dimension only
o Observer places stimuli into 2 or more
categories (S, M, L)
- Multidimensional judgments
o Stimuli vary along more than one
dimensions (e.g., size and colour)
o Observer places stimuli into 2 or more
categories spread across multiple
dimensions
Orthogonal vs Correlated Dimensions
- Stimuli can also have orthogonal and correlated
dimensions
- Most real-world stimuli are multidimensional
- When you consider a set of stimuli they can vary
in different ways
- Orthogonal (Independent)
- Change along one dimension does not affect
other dimension (Ex: weight and eye color)
- Correlated (Dependent)
- Change along one dimension accompanied by
change along other dimension (Ex: weight and
height)
- Example of independent:, horizontal vs. vertical
position in a square
- Example of dependent:, horizontal vs. vertical
position in a triangle
- In multidimensional judgment the capacity of a
person to judge correctly increases especially if
orthogonal dimensions are added. Orthogonal
dimensions add to the channel capacity because
the levels are not related to each other. As such,
people can easily identify them.
- The unidimensional channel capacity of a person
is 3.4 bits but does not double in
multidimensional judgment. The
multidimensional capacity is only 5.8 bits as
some information is lost.
- Can increase capacity by adding orthogonal
dimensions
- But improvement does not represent the perfect
addition of channel capacity along two
dimensions
- Egeth & Pachella (1969)
o unidimensional capacity: 3.4 bits (10
levels)
o multidimensional capacity: 5.8 bits (57
levels)
o dimensions do not sum perfectly, some
information is lost
Diminishing Returns
Correlated Dimensions

- Each additional independent dimensions - This graph shows the relationship between
increase HT but with a cost information transferred HT and number of
- Increase in dimension = Increase in total combined dimensions. As can be seen,
information gained by subject but loss in information transferred increases as the number
transmission rate per dimension of combined dimension increases.
- Diminishing returns in bits per dimension - HT gets bigger as the number of dimensions
- As can be seen in this graph, in order to improve increases
judgment performance, there is a need to add - Since HS remains constant, HS-HT (Hloss) gets less
other dimensions. as number of dimensions increases
o In this case, the total information - More reliable information – example: red,
transferred increase but the position, and sound in a traffic light
transmission rate per dimension also
Separable vs Integral Dimensions
diminishes.
- With orthogonal and correlated dimensions, we
o An example of this is adding style to
are referring to the properties of the information
shoes classification aside from size and
in a stimulus
color. The saleslady will be able to
- How that stimulus is related to other stimuli
categorize more shoes correctly but the
- Not the perceived form of the stimulus
correctness per dimension added will
- Separable vs. integral dimensions refers to the
decrease as it will also overwhelm her.
way that the dimensions of a multidimensional
stimulus interact
Correlated Dimensions
- Separable: each dimension perceived as
- There are also correlated dimensions which
independent of other dimension(s)
improves human performance because it adds
o Example: color and fill texture of object,
redundancy to information.
perpendicular vectors
- For example, the traffic light uses color and
position to prompt an action. As such, if the
driver is color blind, he will still be prompted
correctly by the position of the light.
o Performance can even be made better if o
size is added as a dimension. Considering - Integral: one dimension of the stimulus affects
this, important actions should be perception of other dimension
prompted by signals that have o dimensions are dependent
correlated dimensions. o Examples: color and brightness of an
- Position + color of traffic lights are redundant or object, rectangle height & width
correlated dimensions
- One can be perfectly predicted from the other
- Therefore, total HS=HS for any dimension
o
Examples of Integral/Separable Pairs
Design Implications
- As mentioned earlier, absolute judgment may be
used in industrial sorting task. The performance
of the worker is influenced by the number of
dimensions in a task. Performance is also
affected if dimensions are integral or correlated.
- Industrial Sorting Tasks
o Quality of sort worse if worker has to
judge one dimension and ignore the
other, which is varying independently
o if dimensions are integral
o e.g., if worker in textile factory has to
judge fabric hue (color), but brightness
also varies
Design Implications (Continuation)
- Symbolic categorization: sorting of information
from displays
- In order to improve performance of operators,
interfaces should be designed so that users can
make sense of information quickly.
- The slide shows a contour map that indicates
slope of the terrain, temperature and distance.
- As can be seen here, different dimensions of
information are coded so that it is easier to
understand.
- For example, slope is indicated by the closeness
of the contour lines. The closer the lines the
steeper the slope. Colors, on the other hand
indicates temperature.
Design Implications (Continuation)
- Correlated dimensions are effective at
presenting information because they can
produce emergent or obvious features that users
can immediately understand
- Correlated dimensions represented by integral
displays can produce emergent features, aiding
categorization, e.g, temp. & pressure in a boiler
- Unidimensional judgment impaired by integral
displays of uncorrelated dimensions
- Is there underlying correlation between
variables being coded? (altitude + temperature):
integral dimensions will help
2. Absolute Judgment
- this is classic with the traffic light -- where the
position and color is the same, so I can only look
at one dimension and my reaction will still be
correct -- there is redundancy in the dimensions
--for the functionality of use. Its okay that you
are color blind because you can still answer or
complete the task with the position of the traffic
light.
- common situation here is for judges in singing
contest where they can accurately judge the
tone, pitch of the contestant with the songs that
they sing
- common task here is unidimensional and
multidimensional -- main concept here is its
better to use correlated dimensions if its
multidimensional so to make the performance
better. always remember the final conclusion of
the garner's task, if its orthogonal the
performance is worst. the best performance if
the dimensions are correlated.