Comparison of three adaptive psychophysical procedures

Auditory thresholds were experimentally determined using three adaptive procedures. The procedures are a simple staircase procedure, a maximum-likelihood technique and PEST. The threshold of a sinusoid in noise (simultaneous task) and the threshold of a sinusoid in a forward masking experiment (successive task) were investigated. Number of trials per block, for the staircase and maximum-likelihood procedures, and stopping rule, for PEST, were varied in four different conditions. Nearly equal numbers of trials were obtained for each procedure. The observed variability in successive determinations of threshold was used to estimate standard errors of measurement. All three procedures produced standard errors of measurement that were nearly equal. Some slight differences among the procedures may be of interest for particular applications.