phenomenon · claim-type · cross-domain-transfer · mechanism · claim-relation · replication-status · limitation — grounded in the full text| phenomenon | signal detection theory measures of sensitivity and response bias— “Signal detection theory (SDT) may be applied to any area of psychology in which two different types of stimuli must be discriminated.” | |
| claim-type | method— “Mathematical formulae for the measures are presented, as are methods for calculating the measures with lookup tables, computer software specifically developed for SDTapplications, and gen eral purpose computer software (including spreadsheets and statistical analysis software).” | |
| method — evidence | — “We begin with a brief overview of SOT, including a description of its performance measures.” | |
| transfer | from communications and radar detection theory: signal detection theory, carried into psychology to quantify discrimination between two stimulus types - and it brought its vocabulary with it, so psychological stimuli are still called 'signal' and 'noise'— “Psychologists first applied the theory in studies of perception, where subjects discrimi nated between signals (stimuli) and noise (no stimuli).” | transfers[0] |
| mechanism | Signal detection theory is underused because textbooks describe the theory but omit the computational methods needed to implement it.— “One possible reason for this apparent underutilization of SOT is that relevant textbooks rarely describe the methods needed to implement the theory.” | mechanisms[0] |
| mechanism | Moving the criterion shifts hit and false-alarm rates together, so a liberal criterion inflates both; only reducing the overlap of the signal and noise distributions can raise hits while lowering false alarms.— “The only way to increase the hit rate while reducing the false-alarm rate is to reduce the overlap between the signal and the noise distributions.” | mechanisms[1] |
| mechanism | Ordinary least squares yields biased ROC slope and intercept estimates because it assumes only one variable carries error, while both rate z scores are measured with sampling error.— “In rating tasks, the empirically determined hit and false-alarm rates both contain sampling error, so OLS provides biased estimates of the slope and intercept.” | mechanisms[2] |
| mechanism | a theory is under-used because its methods are omitted, not doubted Textbooks describe the theory and then decline to give the calculation - the paper quotes one concluding a nine-page treatment with the statement that the measures can be calculated by a procedure it will not discuss. Fewer than half the studies that could use SDT do.— “One possible reason for this apparent underutilization of SOT is that relevant textbooks rarely describe the methods needed to implement the theory. A typical example is Goldstein's (1996) popular perception textbook, which concludes a nine-page description of SOT with the statement that measures prescribed by SOT "can be calculated… | mechanisms[3] |
| extends | Grier (1971)— “When Grier (1971) first proposed this measure, he pub lished only the formula to be used when H 2:: F.” | claim_relations[0] |
| contradicts | Macmillan and Creelman (1996)— “Unfortunately, some researchers have confused the two measures, using the formula for Grier's B" to compute what is claimed to be Hodos's bias measure (e.g., Macmillan & Creelman, 1996).” | claim_relations[1] |
| sense | the d' assumptions - NAMED AND UNTESTABLE IN PLACE: normality and equal standard deviations, which the paper says cannot be tested in the yes/no task itself— “We call these the d' assumptions. The assumptions cannot ac tually be tested in yes/no tasks” | senses[0] |
| sense | discriminability versus response bias - the distinction the paper says is so critical that it is illustrated with five examples from widely disparate areas of study— “This point is so critical that we illustrate it with five examples from widely disparate areas of study.” | senses[1] |
| sense | signal / noise - in this paper NOT perceptual stimuli but whichever two categories a domain must discriminate: old/new items, lies/truths, guilty/innocent defendants, diseased/well patients. The words are inherited from perception and the referents are not— “The signal and noise labels remain, but SOT has since been ap plied in many other areas. Examples (and their corre sponding signal and noise stimuli) include recognition memory (old and new items), lie detection (lies and truths), personnel selection (desirable and undesirable applicants), jury decision making (guilty and innocent… | senses[2] |
| differs in | signal —distinct-from→ noise — NOTHING FIXED - the contrast is whatever the domain supplies. Across the seven applications listed in one sentence it is old against new, lie against truth, guilty against innocent, diseased against well. The pair names a CONTRAST STRUCTURE, not two things— “The signal and noise labels remain, but SOT has since been ap plied in many other areas. Examples (and their corre sponding signal and noise stimuli) include recognition memory (old and new items), lie detection (lies and truths), personnel selection (desirable and undesirable applicants), jury decision making (guilty and innocent… | concept_edges[2] |
| weight | signal —distinct-from→ noise — 0.9— “The signal and noise labels remain, but SOT has since been ap plied in many other areas. Examples (and their corre sponding signal and noise stimuli) include recognition memory (old and new items), lie detection (lies and truths), personnel selection (desirable and undesirable applicants), jury decision making (guilty and innocent… | concept_edges[2] |
| for which use | limitation — a d-prime computed from a yes/no task: the paper states the d-prime assumptions cannot actually be tested in yes/no tasks and that rating tasks are required to test them— “We call these the d' assumptions. The assumptions cannot ac tually be tested in yes/no tasks; rating tasks are required for this purpose.” | limitations[0] |
| for which use | limitation — d-prime as a pure sensitivity measure in a yes/no task: the paper states the assumptions may not be tenable and that equality of the signal and noise standard deviations is particularly suspect— “However, for some yes/no tasks, the d' assumptions may not be tenable; the assumption regarding the equality of the signal and the noise standard deviations is particularly suspect” | limitations[1] |
| for which use | limitation — a beta value reported as response bias: its use assumes— “Response bias in a yes/no task is often quantified with {3. Use of this measure assumes that responses are based on a likelihood ratio.” | limitations[2] |
| replication | untested | |
| limitation | The two assumptions d-prime rests on cannot be tested in the task where d-prime is most used; rating tasks are required instead.— “We call these the d' assumptions. The assumptions cannot ac tually be tested in yes/no tasks; rating tasks are required for this purpose.” | limitations[0] |
| limitation | One of the two assumptions is singled out as particularly doubtful for some yes/no tasks.— “However, for some yes/no tasks, the d' assumptions may not be tenable; the assumption regarding the equality of the signal and the noise standard deviations is particularly suspect” | limitations[1] |
| limitation | The common bias measure carries its own assumption about how responses are generated.— “Response bias in a yes/no task is often quantified with {3. Use of this measure assumes that responses are based on a likelihood ratio.” | limitations[2] |
| limitation | The paper's case that the barrier is now gone rests on a comparison rather than a measurement - that software makes the analysis no harder than a t test.— “readily available computer software makes an SOT analy sis no more difficult than a t test” | limitations[3] |
finding · quantity · variable · definition · key-term — grounded in the full text| finding | The major contribution of signal detection theory to psychology is that it separates response bias from sensitivity.— “The major contribution of SDT to psychology is the separation of response bias and sensi tivity.” | content_tags.findings[0] |
| finding | Despite wide acceptance of the theory, fewer than half of the studies to which signal detection theory applies actually use it. Quotation withheld — our stored copy of this sentence carries a text-extraction fault (two words run together), so it is not what the paper says. The tag itself stands; the sentence is being re-fetched. | content_tags.findings[1] |
| finding | Fitting ROC data by ordinary least squares gives biased slope and intercept estimates, because in rating tasks both the hit-rate and the false-alarm-rate z scores carry sampling error rather than only one of them.— “In rating tasks, the empirically determined hit and false-alarm rates both contain sampling error, so OLS provides biased estimates of the slope and intercept.” | content_tags.findings[2] |
| finding | In the worked example OLS gave the misleading impression that the signal and noise distributions have equal standard deviations.— “Furthermore, OLS gives the misleading impression that the signal and noise distributions have equal standard deviations” | content_tags.findings[3] |
| finding | The violated equal-variance assumption explains why the d' values from different criteria varied so widely.— “This violation explains why the d' values in Table 6 each of which results from a different criterion-vary so widely.” | content_tags.findings[4] |
| finding | Lookup tables are an inaccurate route to SDT measures because they force hit and false-alarm rates to be rounded, usually to two significant digits, and some published tables contain wrong entries.— “Tabular methods have relatively poor accuracy. Some tables contain incorrect entries, but even error-free tables can be used only after the hit and false-alarm rates are rounded off (usually to two significant digits).” | content_tags.findings[5] |
| quantity | over 2,000 — citations to Green and Swets (1966) recorded in the Social Sciences Citation Index, used to argue SDT is widely accepted— “Signal detection theory (SOT) is widely accepted by psychologists; the Social Sciences Citation Index cites over 2,000 references to an influential book by Green and Swets (1966) that describes SOT and its application to psychology.” | content_tags.quantities[0] |
| quantity | .9332 — hit rate in the illustrative Figure 1 example, the proportion of the signal distribution above the criterion— “The shaded region of the noise distribution constitutes 30.85% of the entire noise distribution, so the false-alarm rate is .3085. By contrast, 93.32% of the… | content_tags.quantities[1] |
| quantity | 50 signal trials and 25 noise trials — size of the hypothetical rating-task data set used for the worked computational example | content_tags.quantities[2] |
| quantity | d' = 1.56 — sensitivity computed for the second criterion of the worked example (hit rate .92, false-alarm rate .44) | content_tags.quantities[3] |
| quantity | A' = .84 — nonparametric sensitivity for the same pair of rates in the worked example | content_tags.quantities[4] |
| quantity | slope of 1.28 and an intercept of 1.52 — ROCFIT's fitted z-space ROC parameters for the example rating data, from which Az is computed | content_tags.quantities[5] |
| quantity | r = .90 — correlation between hit-rate and false-alarm-rate z scores in the example, shown still to leave the two OLS slopes far apart | content_tags.quantities[6] |
| definition | criterion Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[0] |
| definition | response bias Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[3] |
| definition | d' Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[4] |
| definition | the d' assumptions Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[5] |
| definition | receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[7] |
| definition | ROC area Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[8] |
| definition | m-alternative forced-choice (mAFC) task Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[9] |
| definition | loglinear approach Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[10] |
| definition | hits Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[11] |
| definition | false alarms Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[12] |
| definition | signal distribution Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[13] |
| definition | noise distribution Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.definitions[14] |
| concept | d' assumptions Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[0] |
| concept | response bias Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[1] |
| concept | signal detection theory Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[2] |
| concept | signal Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[3] |
| concept | noise Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[4] |
| concept | recognition memory Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[5] |
| concept | medical diagnosis Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[6] |
| d' (sensitivity index) d' | as written: d' Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[0] |
| A' (nonparametric sensitivity measure) A' | as written: A' Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[1] |
| beta (likelihood-ratio response bias measure) β | as written: Response bias in a yes/no task is often quantified with {3 Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[2] |
| regression (ordinary least squares) | as written: using OLS to regress zH on Z F Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[3] |
| correlation r | as written: The correlation between the hit rate and the false-alarm rate z scores Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[4] |
| ROC curve fitting (slope and intercept in z space) Az | as written: ROCFIT estimates that the ROC curve in z space has a slope of 1.28 and an intercept of 1.52 Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.statistics[5] |
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