Abstract

We measured the masking of a spatial 4-cycle/deg sinusoid in the presence of both random and sinusoidal masks. Subjects used a variety of detection strategies, depending on psychophysical technique and familiarity with the mask Some strategies produce Weber’s-law behavior and appear formally equivalent to identification tasks; we hypothesize that these exemplify the operation of Birdsall’s theorem. Other strategies produce power-law behavior and are more like the simpler detection task. Our results suggest that criterion change (commonly uncontrolled in masking studies) can produce an unacceptably large bias in the results.

© 1985 Optical Society of America

Masking of spatial-frequency discrimination

D. Regan
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 2(7) 1153-1159 (1985)

Double-judgment psychophysics: problems and solutions

Stanley A. Klein
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 2(9) 1560-1585 (1985)

Effect of background components on spatial-frequency masking

Jian Yang and Scott B. Stevenson
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 15(5) 1027-1035 (1998)

Effect of static-noise and grating masks on detection and identification of grating targets

James P. Thomas
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 2(9) 1586-1592 (1985)

Application of a computable model of human spatial vision to phase discrimination

Kenneth R. K. Nielsen, Andrew B. Watson, and Albert J. Ahumada
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 2(9) 1600-1606 (1985)