No troubles with bubbles: a reply to Murray and Gold

Murray and Gold discuss two shortcomings of the Bubbles method [Vision Research 41 (2001) 2261]. The first one is theoretical: Bubbles would not fully characterize the LAM (Linear Amplifier Model) observer, whereas reverse correlation would. The second shortcoming is practical: the apertures that partly reveal information in a typical Bubbles experiment would induce atypical strategies in human observers, whereas the additive Gaussian white noise used by Murray and Gold (and others) in conjunction with reverse correlation would not. Here, we show that these claims are unfounded. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.