Psychophysical system identification by correlation methods
E. G. J. Eijkman · British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology · 1978
This paper outlines a psychophysical system identification based on the description of ‘activity profiles’ in the nervous system. Such ‘profiles’ carry all signal events during processing of a particular stimulus and during initiation of a particular response. It is argued that cross‐correlation of activity profiles supplies a measure for the separability of nervous substructures used in the process of the nearly simultaneous formation of two different responses. It turns out that the common psychophysical practice of measuring the probability of occurrence of particular stimulus‐response pairs gives sufficient information to calculate the cross‐correlation of ‘profiles’. Two experimental paradigms have been worked out: one with compound stimuli in two modalities, vision and audition; the other with a two‐dimensional judgement (pitch and lateralization) of stimuli in a single modality.