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A Two-interval Forced-choice Task for Multisensory Comparisons
Published on: November 9, 2018
A Cross Modal Performance-Based Measure of Sensory Stimuli Intricacy
Kobi Snitz1, Anat Arzi1, Merav Jacobson1
1Dept of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Abstract:
We define a new measure of sensory stimuli which has the following properties: It is cross modal, performance based, robust, and well defined. We interpret this measure as the intricacy or complexity of the stimuli, yet its validity is independent of its interpretation. We tested the validity and cross modality of our measure using three olfactory and one visual experiment. In order to test the link between our measure and cognitive performance we also conducted an additional visual experiment. We found that our measure is correlated with the results of the well-established Rapid Serial Visual Presentation masking experiment. Specifically, ranking stimuli according to our measure was correlated at r = 0.75 (p < 0.002) with masking effectiveness. Thus, our novel measure of sensory stimuli provides a new quantitative tool for the study of sensory processing.
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