A comparison of psychophysical procedures for level-discrimination thresholds

Five different psychophysical procedures were used to measure level-discrimination (also called intensity discrimination) thresholds for 1-kHz tones at two levels (30 and 90 dB SPL) and two durations (10 and 500 ms). The procedures were the classic transformed up-down staircase method with a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) paradigm (UPD), 15- and 50-trial implementations of the method of maximum likelihood (MML) with a cued yes-no paradigm, and 18-trial implementations of ZEST using both cued yes-no and 2AFC paradigms. Results obtained from nine normal listeners show that estimates of level-discrimination thresholds for the four conditions are similar across all five procedures when different points of convergence are accounted for. The variance of threshold estimates within listener and condition was smallest for UPD, largest for the MML with 15 trials, and statistically indistinguishable among the others. The sweat factors ranged from 5.5 for MML with 50 trials to about 1.4 for UPD and ZEST. Simulations show that ideal performance of procedures may be far from real-life experience and that these deviations are likely to depend on complex interactions between listener behavior and parameter choices used for implementing the procedures. Therefore, empirical verification is important for judging the effectiveness of psychophysical procedures.