ABSTRACT
In its simplest form, the detection task involves presenting one of two discriminative stimuli to a subject trained to report which stimulus had been presented. Signal-detection performance is typically examined when the stimuli are presented in well-defined observation intervals and detection responses are emitted in the presence of, or immediately after presentation of, the discriminative stimuli. A behavioral model of detection performance (Davison & Tustin, 1978) has been shown to provide an excellent fit to data obtained from simple detection tasks using animals as subjects. McCarthy and Davison (1981a, b) have published reviews showing that both reinforcement and stimulus variables can be successfully captured within this theoretical framework.
