Comparison of ROC Curves from One- and Two-Interval Rating-Scale Procedures
Barry H. Leshowitz · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1969
The detection of a brief (40 msec) 1000-Hz sinusoid in the presence of narrow-band noise was investigated using a rating-scale procedure. Signals were added either to noise alone (simple detection) or to noise plus sinusoidal pedestal (pedestal detection). In the simple-detection experiment, the noise masker was presented in one condition as a steady background and in another as a gated burst for a duration equal to the observation interval. In the pedestal-detection experiment, the masker, consisting of noise plus pedestal, was gated on only during the observation interval. Receiver operating characteristics (ROC curves) were determined utilizing both a one-interval and a two-interval observation period. A comparison of performance measures estimated from ROC's for one- and two-interval paradigms showed that detectability was superior for the two-interval paradigm. The slopes of the ROC's for two-interval detection were slightly larger than unity and were greater than those obtained in comparable one-interval experiments.