article on stochastic resonance in human cognition

[m.usher@psychology.bbk.ac.uk]

The following article addressing the phenomenon of stochastic resonance (SR), 
and which was recently published as a Letter to the Editors in 
Biol. Cybern. 83 (2000) 6, L011-L016, can now be accessed from the 
following website:

www.psyc.bbk.ac.uk/staff/mu/homepage/noise/SR.pdf


Stochastic resonance in the speed of memory retrieval

      Marius Usher        and      Mario Feingold
    Birkbeck College               Ben Gurion University
  University of London             Beer Sheva, Israel
  Email: M.Usher at bbk.ac.uk         Email: Mario at bgumail.bgu.ac.il


                     Abstract. 

The stochastic resonance (SR) phenomenon in human cognition (memory retrieval 
speed for arithmetical multiplication rules) is addressed in a behavioral 
and neurocomputational study. The results of an experiment in which 
performance was monitored for various magnitudes of acoustic noise are 
presented. The average response time was found to be minimal for some optimal 
noise level. Moreover, it was shown that the optimal noise level and the
magnitude of the SR effect depend on the difficulty of the task. 
A computational framework based on leaky accumulators that integrate noisy 
information and provide the output upon reaching a threshold criterion is 
used to explain the observed phenomena.