ABSTRACT
In the last two chapters, we described correspondence experiments in which people report which of two events (such as seeing a New or Old face) had occurred. According to detection theory, they do this by comparing the strength of evidence, which we called familiarity, with a criterion. Observations of more than criterial familiarity are called “old,” and those below criterion are called “new.” The criterion is placed at a location of the observer’s choice: Strict criteria serve to minimize false alarms, lax criteria to minimize misses.
