Efficiency of the human observer for detecting a Gaussian signal at a known location in non-Gaussian distributed lumpy backgrounds

摘要

A previous study [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 22, 3 (2005)] has shown that human efficiency for detecting a Gaussian signal at a known location in non-Gaussian distributed lumpy backgrounds is approximately 4percent. This human efficiency is much less than the reported 40percent efficiency that has been documented for Gaussian-distributed lumpy backgrounds [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 16, 694 (1999) and J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 18, 473 (2001)]. We conducted a psychophysical study with a number of changes, specifically in display-device calibration and data scaling, from the design of the aforementioned study. Human efficiency relative to the ideal observer was found again to be approximately 5percent. Our variance analysis indicates that neither scaling nor display made a statistically significant difference in human performance for the task. We conclude that the non-Gaussian distributed lumpy background is a major factor in our low human-efficiency results.