Integrative Neuroscience

Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE)

Kenneth Knoblauch, PhD

Universíte Claude Bernard, France

University Southeastern Norway

This workshop will focus on statistical tools to analyze and to model psychophysical experiments within the framework of Signal Detection Theory. This includes choiee experiments (detection, discrimination, identification, etc.), fitting psy­chometric functions and rating scale experiments with RO( analyses. In many cases, the deciSion rule underlying these paradigms iS lrnear, thereby permitting the analyses to be facilitated by using a Generalized linear Model (GLM). Rating scales, similarty, are analyzed by using ordinal regression models with cumulative link functions. With these app!oaches, we can define straight-forward procedures to fit the data, to test hypotheses about them, to obtain confidence intervals, etc. Most off-the-shelf software packages now include tools for performing GLMs, thus, making it easy to implement these tests and procedures. Examples will be shown using the R p1U9ramming enVironment and language (hl!fil:il www.1-oroject.org). Finally, an example will be shown of this approach with a paradigm for measuring appearance, i.e., scaling. 

Background reading includes the books "Modeling Psychophysical Data in R': K. Krioblauch & L. T. Maloney, 2012, Springer, (for R users) 

'Psychophysics: A Practical Introduction, 2nd Edition''. F. A. A. Kingdom & N. Prins, 2016, Academic Press (for matlab users).