We consider the response of a test subject upon a skin area being heated with an electromagnetic wave or a contact surface. When the specifications of the electromagnetic beam are fixed, the stimulus is solely describ...We consider the response of a test subject upon a skin area being heated with an electromagnetic wave or a contact surface. When the specifications of the electromagnetic beam are fixed, the stimulus is solely described by the heating duration. The binary response of a subject, escape or no escape, is determined by the stimulus and a subjective threshold that varies among test realizations. We study four methods for inferring the median subjective threshold in psychophysical experiments: 1) sample median, 2) maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) with 2 variables, 3) MLE with 1 variable, and 4) adaptive Bayesian method. While methods 1 - 3 require samples of time to escape measured in the method of limits, method 4 utilizes binary outcomes observed in the method of constant stimuli. We find that a) the adaptive Bayesian method converges and is as efficient as the sample median even when the assumed model distribution is incorrect;b) this robust convergence is lost if we infer the mean instead of the median;c) for the optimal performance in an uncertain situation, it is best to use a wide model distribution;d) the predicted error from the posterior standard deviation is unreliable, dominated by the assumed model distribution.展开更多
We consider the psychophysical experiments in which the test subject’s binary reaction is determined by the prescribed exposure duration to a stimulus and a random variable subjective threshold. For example, when a s...We consider the psychophysical experiments in which the test subject’s binary reaction is determined by the prescribed exposure duration to a stimulus and a random variable subjective threshold. For example, when a subject is exposed to a millimeter wave beam for a prescribed duration, the occurrence of flight action is binary (yes or no). In experiments, in addition to the binary outcome, the actuation time of flight action is also recorded if it occurs;the delay from the initiation time to the actuation time of flight action is the human reaction time, which is not measurable. In this study, we model the random subjective threshold as a Weibull distribution and formulate an inference method for estimating the human reaction time, from data of prescribed exposure durations, binary outcomes and actuation times of flight action collected in a sequence of tests. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the inference of human reaction time based on the Weibull distribution converges to the correct value even when the underlying true model deviates from the inference model. This robustness of the inference method makes it applicable to real experimental data where the underlying true model is unknown.展开更多
文摘We consider the response of a test subject upon a skin area being heated with an electromagnetic wave or a contact surface. When the specifications of the electromagnetic beam are fixed, the stimulus is solely described by the heating duration. The binary response of a subject, escape or no escape, is determined by the stimulus and a subjective threshold that varies among test realizations. We study four methods for inferring the median subjective threshold in psychophysical experiments: 1) sample median, 2) maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) with 2 variables, 3) MLE with 1 variable, and 4) adaptive Bayesian method. While methods 1 - 3 require samples of time to escape measured in the method of limits, method 4 utilizes binary outcomes observed in the method of constant stimuli. We find that a) the adaptive Bayesian method converges and is as efficient as the sample median even when the assumed model distribution is incorrect;b) this robust convergence is lost if we infer the mean instead of the median;c) for the optimal performance in an uncertain situation, it is best to use a wide model distribution;d) the predicted error from the posterior standard deviation is unreliable, dominated by the assumed model distribution.
文摘We consider the psychophysical experiments in which the test subject’s binary reaction is determined by the prescribed exposure duration to a stimulus and a random variable subjective threshold. For example, when a subject is exposed to a millimeter wave beam for a prescribed duration, the occurrence of flight action is binary (yes or no). In experiments, in addition to the binary outcome, the actuation time of flight action is also recorded if it occurs;the delay from the initiation time to the actuation time of flight action is the human reaction time, which is not measurable. In this study, we model the random subjective threshold as a Weibull distribution and formulate an inference method for estimating the human reaction time, from data of prescribed exposure durations, binary outcomes and actuation times of flight action collected in a sequence of tests. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the inference of human reaction time based on the Weibull distribution converges to the correct value even when the underlying true model deviates from the inference model. This robustness of the inference method makes it applicable to real experimental data where the underlying true model is unknown.
