Likelihood-ratio decision strategy for independent observations in the same-different task: an approximation to the detection-theoretic model.

An optimal decision strategy for deciding whether two things are the same or different is to adopt a likelihood-ratio criterion. The parametric equations for the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) based on the likelihood-ratio strategy when observations are independent are complicated; they require the numerical evaluation of a double integral. An approximation to the parametric equations for the likelihood-ratio strategy was developed. This approximation takes the form of a pair of equations that describe ROCs virtually indistinguishable from those of the full model.