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.
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