气味质量感知：一种度量个体差异的方法。

Odorant quality perception: a metric individual differences approach.

作者信息

Kurtz D B, Sheehe P R, Kent P F, White T L, Hornung D E, Wright H N

机构信息

State University of New York Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY 13210, USA.

出版信息

Percept Psychophys. 2000 Jul;62(5):1121-9. doi: 10.3758/bf03212093.

DOI:10.3758/bf03212093

PMID:10997054

Abstract

Perceptual spaces, in which similar stimuli are located close to each other and dissimilar stimuli are located far apart, have aided in the understanding of the physiological and psychological bases for sensory quality coding. Differences in perception between individuals should be reflected by differences in the spatial relationships between stimuli. If the dimensionality of the perceptual space is small (e.g., color space), individual differences that reflect specific pathologies are readily apparent from visual inspection. On the other hand, if the dimensionality of the perceptual space is large (as is proposed for odor space), visual inspection alone may not reveal individual differences in quality perception. The present work presents an information-theory-based method for quantifying individual differences in quality perception from perceptual confusion matrices. The ability of this method to quantify individual differences in quality perception is shown in a hypothetical example of specific anosmia. Finally, the method is applied to the examination of intrasubject consistency of odorant quality perception.

摘要

在感知空间中，相似的刺激物彼此靠近，不相似的刺激物相距甚远，这有助于理解感官质量编码的生理和心理基础。个体之间感知的差异应通过刺激物之间空间关系的差异来反映。如果感知空间的维度较小（例如颜色空间），那么反映特定病理的个体差异通过视觉检查就很容易显现出来。另一方面，如果感知空间的维度较大（如对气味空间所提出的那样），仅靠视觉检查可能无法揭示质量感知方面的个体差异。本研究提出了一种基于信息论的方法，用于从感知混淆矩阵量化质量感知中的个体差异。该方法量化质量感知中个体差异的能力在一个特定嗅觉缺失的假设示例中得到了展示。最后，该方法被应用于检验气味质量感知的个体内一致性。