Comparison of the Receiver Operating Characteristic for Messages Received by Ear and by Eye
Edward C. Carterette, Michael Cole · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1959
Receivers were presented with equal-length words under two conditions of difficult reception: (1) by ear, against a background of white noise; and (2) by eye, for a brief period in a tachistoscope. For each word presented, the receiver recorded a message and, immediately following, gave a confidence rating with respect to his accuracy of reception. The similarities between the functions for the auditory and visual modes of reception are remarkable. It is found that for both auditory and visual presentation the accuracy of reception is (1) directly related to the confidence rating, (2) relatively invariant over a range of signal-to-noise ratios, (3) is not impaired by the task of rating, and (4) changes very little with successive repetitions. Furthermore (5) the distributions of rating categories change very little with successive repetitions. These results support and extend the generality of the statistical decision-making theory of the receiver [see especially W. P. Tanner and J. A. Swets, Psychol. Rev. 61, 401–409 (1954); and J. P. Egan, Tech. Rept., AFCRC TR 57-50, AD 110064 (1957)]. (This work was supported by the Research Committee of the University of California.)