RECEIVER OPERATING CHARACTERISTICS FROM NONHUMAN ANIMALS - SOME IMPLICATIONS AND DIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH WITH HUMANS

Reviews of signal detection have largely overlooked the research invol ving nonhuman animal subjects. Some of this research is presented and reanalyzed here. Plots of receiver operating characteristics show that human and nonhuman signal-detection performance is very similar. The studies emphasize the series of discriminations that comprise signal-d etection tasks and illustrate the systematic effects of different meth ods of arranging payoffs or feedback, of the consistency of that feedb ack, and of the physical disparity between response alternatives. The data provide some support for recent theoretical accounts that favor a criterion location measure of isobias over the likelihood ratio, but they also suggest that more systematic work is required in this area. Overall, this research supports many contemporary views concerning sig nal detection, and it provides an alternative way of looking at some r ecurrent issues. It also suggests that extensions of signal detection to analyze data from other research paradigms require some caution, an d it offers directions for complementary research with human subjects.