Patient false positives signal a reasonable response criterion, not poor performance

Evidence

Audiologists should be encouraged by patients who produce some false positives — a false positive is an indicator that the patient has not adopted an excessively conservative criterion. … Familiarization. By starting at a level above the patient’s estimated threshold (e.g., 30 dB HL for a normal-hearing patient), the patient has time to learn the task and adopt a reasonable criterion. — Jennifer Lentz, Psychoacoustics- Perception of Normal…, 347

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Connects to how measurement error and caution shape what we trust in clinical diagnosis, alongside ‘On Sacrifice’ themes of risk standards.