Adapting to remapped auditory localization cues: a decision-theory model.

This paper describes a model of adaptation to remapped auditory localization cues that is based on previous decision-theory models of psychophysical performance. The present model extends earlier work by explicitly assuming that past experience affects subject perception and by quantifying how training causes subjects' responses to evolve over time. The model makes quantitative predictions of total sensitivity, bias, and resolution for subjects involved in experiments investigating spatial auditory adaptation. One assumption of the model is that subjects cannot adapt to nonlinear rearrangements of localization cues, which is consistent with previous experimental reports in both audition (Shinn-Cunningham, Durlach, & Held, 1998b) and vision (Bedford, 1993). The model assumes that, in spatial adaptation experiments, subjects learn to interpret a continuous internal decision variable differently than normal; they do not learn to associate discrete stimulus-response pairs. This view is consistent with previous analyses of results from experiments investigating adaptation to visual rearrangement, as well as with the McCullough effect in vision (Bedford, 1993, 1995).