Rip van Winkle Returns to Animal Learning and Signal Detection

Reviews the book, Signal Detection: Mechanisms, Models, and Applications by Michael L. Commons, John A. Nevin, and Michael C. Davison (Eds.) (1991). I consider myself the Rip van Winkle of the application of the theory of signal detectability to animal learning. In the early 1960s, I was simultaneously trained at the University of Texas in the tradition of animal learning developed by Skinner and in psychophysics and psychoacoustics. In the traditionally dull field of psychophysics, this era was exciting because the theory of signal detection was just beginning to make an impact on the conduct of experiments in psychoacoustics. As the Rip van Winkle of signal detection and animal learning, I found that the theoretical terrain looks pretty familiar after an absence of over 25 years. The range of problems to which the theory has been applied has expanded, but the basic theory remains unchanged and as useful as when it was first introduced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)