Detection and recognition of auditory patterns.

The detection/recognition theorem (Starr, Metz, Lusted, & Goodenough, 1975) provides a signal detection theory prediction of an observer's ability to identify one of a set of possible signals on the basis of the observer's ability to detect whether any signal is presented. The present findings show that the theorem can be applied to complex auditory stimuli in a fashion that is not merely a trivial extension of the results obtained with simple auditory stimuli.