ABSTRACT
Detection theory models have faced three classes of competitors. First, before the advent of detection theory, much of psychophysics was concerned with measuring “thresholds,” below which stimuli were thought not to be perceived. Second, in the 1950s and early 1960s, as Tanner, Green, and Swets were developing signal detection theory, Luce (1959, 1963a) proposed Choice Theory, a conceptually different analysis of a similar range of experiments. Third, one reaction to detection theory has been an attempt to avoid the “parametric” assumption that the underlying distributions are Gaussian.
