Placement of observations for the efficient estimation of a psychometric function

Psychometric functions for different psychophysical tasks describe the relationship between physical stimuli and subjects' responses. Although a psychometric function is of considerable value, characterizing the function is time consuming and, hence, is not carried out routinely in psychophysical experiments. A principal reason for the lack of efficiency in characterizing the psychometric function is the use of unimodal (e.g., Gaussian and uniform) sampling methods. As an alternative, a multimodal four-point sampling method is proposed. A psychometric function is then fitted to the four data points (each with several trials) to estimate the threshold and slope parameters of the psychometric function. Results from three examples demonstrate that a 60% savings in data-collection time can be achieved. (C) 1996 Acoustical Society of America.