Abstract
We define a new measure of sensory stimuli which has the following properties: It is cross modal, performance based, robust, and well defined. We interpret this measure as the intricacy or complexity of the stimuli, yet its validity is independent of its interpretation. We tested the validity and cross modality of our measure using three olfactory and one visual experiment. In order to test the link between our measure and cognitive performance we also conducted an additional visual experiment. We found that our measure is correlated with the results of the well-established Rapid Serial Visual Presentation masking experiment. Specifically, ranking stimuli according to our measure was correlated at r = 0.75 (p 0.002) with masking effectiveness. Thus, our novel measure of sensory stimuli provides a new quantitative tool for the study of sensory processing.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e0147449 |
| Journal | PLoS ONE |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 1 Feb 2016 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2016 Snitz et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.