Preference gives more consistent judgments than oddity only if the task can be modeled as forced choice
- 1 July 1994
- journal article
- Published by Springer Nature in Perception & Psychophysics
- Vol. 55 (4) , 473-477
- https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03205304
Abstract
Earlier data showed that subjects presented with two samples of distilled water and one of tap water were significantly more consistent in choosing the tap water as preferred than in identifying it as the odd sample in the set. The results were sometimes interpreted as demonstrating greater sensitivity for hedonic judgments than for oddity judgments. They are now shown to be explained by the statistical properties of the decision rules followed in different judgment tasks. In a new experiment, oddity and preference judgements were obtained in a replication of the original task with extra conditions. In two of the new conditions, the decision structure of a preference task was the same as that for the oddity task; in these conditions, performance was no better than with explicit oddity responses. The Thurstone-Ura model of triangle judgments proposed by Frijters predicts the results as an outcome of the greater statistical power of three-alternative forced choice tests compared with triangular tests. An excellent fit to all the data is given by a model wherein all subjects have the same d' for the difference between the water types but 25% of them prefer distilled water to tap water.Keywords
This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit:
- Preference can be more powerful than detection of oddity as a test of discriminabilityPerception & Psychophysics, 1992
- Tables of d′ for the triangular method and the 3-AFC signal detection procedurePerception & Psychophysics, 1980
- The paradox of discriminatory nondiscriminators resolvedChemical Senses, 1979
- Variations of the triangular method and the relationship of its unidimensional probabilistic models to three‐alternative forced‐choice signal detection theory modelsBritish Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 1979
- A revised table of d’ for M-alternative forced choicePerception & Psychophysics, 1979