Benjamin Aaron S, Diaz Michael, Wee Serena
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA.
Psychol Rev. 2009 Jan;116(1):84-115. doi: 10.1037/a0014351.
A tacit but fundamental assumption of the theory of signal detection is that criterion placement is a noise-free process. This article challenges that assumption on theoretical and empirical grounds and presents the noisy decision theory of signal detection (ND-TSD). Generalized equations for the isosensitivity function and for measures of discrimination incorporating criterion variability are derived, and the model's relationship with extant models of decision making in discrimination tasks is examined. An experiment evaluating recognition memory for ensembles of word stimuli revealed that criterion noise is not trivial in magnitude and contributes substantially to variance in the slope of the isosensitivity function. The authors discuss how ND-TSD can help explain a number of current and historical puzzles in recognition memory, including the inconsistent relationship between manipulations of learning and the isosensitivity function's slope, the lack of invariance of the slope with manipulations of bias or payoffs, the effects of aging on the decision-making process in recognition, and the nature of responding in remember-know decision tasks. ND-TSD poses novel, theoretically meaningful constraints on theories of recognition and decision making more generally, and provides a mechanism for rapprochement between theories of decision making that employ deterministic response rules and those that postulate probabilistic response rules.
信号检测理论一个默认但基本的假设是，标准设定是一个无噪声的过程。本文基于理论和实证依据对该假设提出质疑，并提出了信号检测的噪声决策理论（ND-TSD）。推导了等感受性函数以及纳入标准变异性的辨别力度量的广义方程，并考察了该模型与辨别任务中现有决策模型的关系。一项评估单词刺激集合识别记忆的实验表明，标准噪声的量级不可忽略，且对等感受性函数斜率的方差有很大贡献。作者讨论了ND-TSD如何有助于解释识别记忆中当前和历史上的一些谜题，包括学习操作与等感受性函数斜率之间的不一致关系、斜率随偏差或收益操作的不变性缺失、衰老对识别决策过程的影响，以及在记得-知道决策任务中的反应性质。ND-TSD对更一般的识别和决策理论提出了新颖且具有理论意义的限制，并为采用确定性反应规则的决策理论与假定概率性反应规则的决策理论之间的和解提供了一种机制。
