A diffusion model account of masking in two-choice letter identification.

The diffusion model developed by R. Ratcliff (1978, 1981, 1985, 1988) for 2-choice decisions was applied to data from 2 letter identification experiments. In the experiments, stimulus letters were displayed and then masked, and the stimulus onset asynchrony between letter and mask was manipulated to vary accuracy from near chance to near ceiling. A standard reaction time procedure was used in one experiment and a deadline procedure in the other. Two hypotheses about the effect of masking on the information provided to the decision process were contrasted: (a) The output of perception to the decision process varies with time, so that the information used by the decision process rises and falls, reflecting the stimulus onset and mask onset. (b) The output of perception to the decision is constant over time, reflecting information integrated over the time between the stimulus and mask onsets. The data were well fit by the diffusion model only with the assumption of constant information over time.

[1]  Feller William,et al.  An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications , 1950 .

[2]  M. Stone.  Models for choice-reaction time , 1960 .

[3]  W. Lee,et al.  CATEGORIZING EXTERNALLY DISTRIBUTED STIMULUS SAMPLES FOR THREE CONTINUA. , 1964, Journal of experimental psychology.

[4]  John A. Nelder,et al.  A Simplex Method for Function Minimization , 1965, Comput. J..

[5]  R. Audley,et al.  SOME ALTERNATIVE STOCHASTIC MODELS OF CHOICE1 , 1965 .

[6]  William Feller,et al.  An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications , 1967 .

[7]  Donald Laming,et al.  Information theory of choice-reaction times , 1968 .

[8]  D. Kahneman.  Method, findings, and theory in studies of visual masking. , 1968, Psychological bulletin.

[9]  Douglas Vickers,et al.  Discriminating between the frequency of occurrence of two alternative events , 1971 .

[10]  M. Turvey.  On peripheral and central processes in vision: inferences from an information-processing analysis of masking with patterned stimuli. , 1973, Psychological review.

[11]  S. Link.  The relative judgment theory of two choice response time , 1975 .

[12]  S. Link,et al.  A sequential theory of psychological discrimination , 1975 .

[13]  B G Breitmeyer,et al.  Implications of sustained and transient channels for theories of visual pattern masking, saccadic suppression, and information processing. , 1976, Psychological review.

[14]  Roger Ratcliff,et al.  A Theory of Memory Retrieval. , 1978 .

[15]  D. Vickers.  Decision processes in visual perception , 1979 .

[16]  R. Ratcliff.  Group reaction time distributions and an analysis of distribution statistics. , 1979, Psychological bulletin.

[17]  Roger Ratcliff,et al.  A note on modeling accumulation of information when the rate of accumulation changes over time , 1980 .

[18]  R. Heath.  A tandem random walk model for psychological discrimination. , 1981, The British journal of mathematical and statistical psychology.

[19]  R. Ratcliff.  A theory of order relations in perceptual matching. , 1981 .

[20]  James L. McClelland,et al.  An interactive activation model of context effects in letter perception: I. An account of basic findings. , 1981 .

[21]  James L. McClelland,et al.  An interactive activation model of context effects in letter perception: Part 2. The contextual enhancement effect and some tests and extensions of the model. , 1982, Psychological review.

[22]  Bruno G. Breitmeyer,et al.  Visual masking : an integrative approach , 1984 .

[23]  R. Ratcliff.  Theoretical interpretations of the speed and accuracy of positive and negative responses. , 1985, Psychological review.

[24]  Philip L. Smith,et al.  The accumulator model of two-choice discrimination , 1988 .

[25]  Gregory Ashby,et al.  Decision rules in the perception and categorization of multidimensional stimuli. , 1988, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[26]  R Ratcliff,et al.  Continuous versus discrete information processing modeling accumulation of partial information. , 1988, Psychological review.

[27]  C. Bundesen.  A theory of visual attention. , 1990, Psychological review.

[28]  Richard A. Heath,et al.  A general nonstationary diffusion model for two-choice decision-making , 1992 .

[29]  J. Townsend,et al.  Fundamental derivations from decision field theory , 1992 .

[30]  J. Townsend,et al.  Decision field theory: a dynamic-cognitive approach to decision making in an uncertain environment. , 1993, Psychological review.

[31]  V. Lollo,et al.  Beyond Visible Persistence: An Alternative Account of Temporal Integration and Segregation in Visual Processing , 1994, Cognitive Psychology.

[32]  G. Loftus,et al.  Sensory and cognitive components of visual information acquisition. , 1994, Psychological review.

[33]  Charles S. Watson,et al.  Effects of decision criterion on response latencies of binary decisions , 1994, Perception & psychophysics.

[34]  Ingo Spitczok von Brisinski.  Ultrafast display buildup with standard VGA on MS-DOS computers , 1994 .

[35]  Arthur F. Kramer,et al.  Strategies and automaticity. I: Basic findings and conceptual framework , 1994 .

[36]  G R Loftus,et al.  A theory of visual information acquisition and visual memory with special application to intensity-duration trade-offs. , 1994, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[37]  Philip L. Smith.  Psychophysically principled models of visual simple reaction time. , 1995 .

[38]  Roger Ratcliff,et al.  Statistical mimicking of reaction time data: Single-process models, parameter variability, and mixtures , 1995, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[39]  J Grainger,et al.  Orthographic processing in visual word recognition: a multiple read-out model. , 1996, Psychological review.

[40]  Jeffrey N. Rouder,et al.  Modeling Response Times for Two-Choice Decisions , 1998 .

[41]  R. Ratcliff,et al.  Connectionist and diffusion models of reaction time. , 1999, Psychological review.