Psychometric Function of Absolute Hearing Threshold
Psychometric function ‘represents the probability of a certain listener's response as a function of the magnitude of the particular sound characteristic being studied’.
To give an example, this could be the probability curve of the subject detecting a sound being presented as a function of the sound level. When the stimulus is presented to the listener one would expect that the sound would either be audible or inaudible, resulting in a 'doorstep' function. In reality a grey area exists where the listener is uncertain as to whether they have actually heard the sound or not, so their responses are inconsistent, resulting in a psychometric function.
The psychometric function is a sigmoid function which is characterised by being ‘s’ shaped in its graphical representation.
Read more about this topic: Absolute Threshold Of Hearing
Famous quotes containing the words function, absolute, hearing and/or threshold:
“The intension of a proposition comprises whatever the proposition entails: and it includes nothing else.... The connotation or intension of a function comprises all that attribution of this predicate to anything entails as also predicable to that thing.”
—Clarence Lewis (1883–1964)
“The appalling thing is the degree of charity women are capable of. You see it all the time ... love lavished on absolute fools. Love’s a charity ward, you know.”
—Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990)
“Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ... I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.””
—Bible: Hebrew, Job 42:3-6.
Job to God.
“On the threshold of any wholly new and momentous devoted enterprise, the thousand ulterior intricacies and emperilings to which it must conduct; these, at the outset, are mostly withheld from sight.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)