Analysis of weights in multiple observation tasks

Multiple observation tasks are often used to investigate observers’ abilities to combine information from different sources or observations. This paper discusses a method for assessing the relative weight given to each observation. First, a theorem that derives the relative weights is stated. A technique for estimating relative weights is then illustrated by analyzing data from a multiple-tone task. In this task, observers listen to a sample of tones drawn from one of two distributions and decide which distribution was sampled. Results show that observers integrate information nonoptimally, attaching greater weight to the first and/or last observations than to observations occurring in the middle of the sequence. The generality of the technique is discussed.