(Pierre Divenyi )

Subject: 
From:    Pierre Divenyi  <marva4!pdivenyi(at)UCDAVIS.EDU>
Date:    Wed, 27 Oct 1993 12:32:46 PDT

ucdavis!auditory(at)vm1.mcgill.ca

Re: Steve McAdams's comments on P. Divenyi's comments on B. Repp's expt.

The difference between a "classical" discrimination experiment
(pitch, intensity, or shoe size) and the Shepard tone discrimination
experiment is that one has absolutely no way of determining
what made the subject respond the way he/she did. I am not here
to defend Dave Green, Ed Burns, or Neil Viemesiter (they can do
it better themselves), but would like to warn against making
far-reaching inferences from essentially uninterpretable data.
I am not even saying that the results are wrong: all I would like
to (equally) respectfully propose is to go after the presumed
effect with some other method, too.

For a discussion of criterion, I recommend the interested readers to
browse through the recent book by Macmillan and Creelman, or
Egan's (posthumus?) book. However, the good-old text by Green and
Swets is also an excellent starting point. And, please, do not
consider this as an exercise in didactism -- I like to have people
talk the same language when they discuss any issue.

--Pierre Divenyi

PS: Steve (McAdams): Beef in the U.S. is no longer politically correct.