Perceptual Learning Model: Implementation

These archives contain Matlab software implementing the perceptual learning model of Petrov, Dosher, & Lu (2005, 2006). They also contain the PsychToolbox software that administered the two perceptual learning experiments reported in these articles. The detailed behavioral data are also available.

Installation Instructions

The model was developed and run on Matlab 5.3 (R11) for Windows. It ported flawlessly to Matlab 6 (R13) for Windows and then to Matlab 7.5 (R2007b) for Mac OS X Intel. It depends on the Statistics and Optimization Toolboxes, although the Statistics dependency is probably minimal.

The experiments were administered using Matlab 5.2.1 for Macintosh OS 9.2.2. The PsychToolbox-intensive functions for movie presentation don't work well under Windows but those for image generation do.

To install, simply unzip the archive in a directory of your choice and execute the PercLearn_install script to add the relevant directories to Matlab's path. The same script does some pre-processing of the ASCII data files (for the exper and full versions). A full installation should generate the following transcript. After you install the model, you may wish to run the PLM_demo tutorial.

If something doesn't work or some relevant files are missing, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you for your interest in this software. I hope you find it useful.

License

This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License and the Free Software Foundation for more details.

The software is freely available and freely redistributable, according to the conditions of the GNU General Public License. You may not distribute the software, in whole or in part, in conjunction with proprietary code. That means you only have my permission to distribute a program that uses my code if you also make freely available (under the terms of the GNU GPL) the source code for your whole project. You may not pass on the software to another party in its current form or any altered, embellished or reduced form, without acknowledging the author, citing Petrov, Dosher & Lu (2005), and including a copy of the GNU GPL.

Perceptual Learning Model

There are numerous transcripts (*.txt files) of all sorts of Matlab sessions taken during the development and fitting the model. Use them as guidance. Also, make sure to run PLM_demo. It shows how to generate images, pass them through the representational subsystem of the model (PLFrontend), generate a representation cache, generate a non-stationary presentation sequence, run the learning task-specific subsystem of the model (PLM_Hebb2), and finally analyze and plot the model performance. Check it out!

Project page README demo-transcript

Perceptual Learning Experiments

The archives contain the data from two psychophysical experiments testing perceptual learning in an orientation-discrimination task in non-stationary contexts. "PLExp1" involves trial-by-trial feedback and is desribed in Petrov, Dosher, & Lu (2005). "PLExp2" is a no-feedback follow-up and is desribed in Petrov, Dosher, & Lu (2006). The data from several other studies are available from Alex Petrov upon request.

Project page README-PLExp1 README-PLExp2