Visual Detection and Discrimination of Luminance Increments*

A rating-scale psychophysical method was employed to obtain receiver operating characteristics for detection and for discrimination of luminance increments. These curves were used to estimate the parameters of a normal probability-density function which was assumed to describe the relevant internal effects of the test flash. The over-all results strongly indicate that the mean of this distribution is a positively accelerated function of luminance of the test flash, and suggest that the standard deviation is a non-monotonic function of luminance. It is argued that quantum fluctuations and criterion fluctuations cannot account for these findings, whereas channel uncertainty may be at the root of some of them.