One-up two-down adaptive procedures track the 70.7% point on the psychometric function

Evidence

Participants sat in a sound-attenuating booth and listed to stimuli presented to their right ear or better ear. Masker threshold for a fixed signal level was measured using a three-interval forced-choice adaptive procedure. Participants were instructed to use a computer mouse or keyboard to choose the interval that sounded different from the others. The masker level was increased following one incorrect response and decreased following two correct responses. Following this procedure, an estimate of 70 % correct on the psychometric function is obtained (Levitt 1971 ). Masker threshold for a given trial was calculated as an average of the last eight of the 12 total reversals. Thresholds with a standard deviation of 5 dB or greater were not included in the final average. The order of the conditions was counterbalanced across the participants. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 939

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• DEFINE: Clarifies the standard Levitt adaptive staircase rule: one incorrect response bumps level up, two correct bump it down, converging on roughly 70.7% correct — a foundational psychophysical method.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone running psychoacoustic threshold experiments, e.g. a lab colleague who uses adaptive tracking without knowing the exact convergence level.

Related

• Two-down one-up adaptive tracking estimates the 70 percent correct threshold (similarity 0.96)
• Two-down one-up adaptive procedures estimate the 70 percent correct point (similarity 0.92)
• The 3-down one-up adaptive rule tracks 79.4 percent correct thresholds (similarity 0.89)
• Adaptive staircase procedures converge to thresholds by adjusting signal level per answer (similarity 0.87)
• One-up-two-down adaptive staircases can report lower thresholds than other estimation methods (similarity 0.86)
• Three-down-one-up adaptive tracking efficiently estimates perceptual thresholds (similarity 0.86)
• Adaptive procedures converge on thresholds without explicit psychometric functions (similarity 0.86)
• Adaptive staircase tracks the 70.7 percent correct point on the psychometric function (similarity 0.86)
• Adaptive 3-down 1-up tracking with 2 dB steps estimates spectral ripple thresholds (similarity 0.85)
• Adaptive procedures adjust stimulus intensity based on prior responses and converge on thresholds (similarity 0.85)
• Adaptive threshold methods trade fast converging results against convergence risk (similarity 0.83)
• Threshold from up-down staircases is the averaged level at response reversals. (similarity 0.82)
• Adaptive staircase procedures trade efficiency and bias avoidance against convergence risk (similarity 0.81)
• MAA thresholds are measured with 3-AFC staircases tracking the 70.7% point (similarity 0.80)
• Adaptive staircases track a listener’s responses to set signal level (similarity 0.80)