Grid - a fast threshold tracking procedure

A new procedure, called “grid”, is evaluated that allows rapid acquisition of threshold curves for psychophysics and, in particular, psychoacoustic, experiments. In this method, the parameterresponse space is sampled in two dimensions within a single run. This allows the procedure to focus more experimental time investigating the vicinity of the sought-after threshold curve, compared to the current state-of-the-art methods.

Therefore, time-efficiency is significantly increased and may be suitable for clinical diagnosis. While the described procedure can be used to track threshold curves in various psychoacoustic experiments, its use for measuring temporal masking curves (TMCs), based on forward masking is presented in the present study.

Thresholds obtained in TMC experiments using a standard adaptive method and the new method, in a detection task, are comparable (i.e., very highly correlated).