Exploration of Contextuality in a Psychophysical Double-Detection Experiment

TL;DR

This paper applies the Contextuality-by-Default theory to a psychophysical double-detection experiment, demonstrating that behavioral responses lack contextuality but show influence between stimuli, highlighting the role of context in response distribution.

Contribution

It extends the application of CbD theory to psychophysical experiments, providing necessary and sufficient conditions for noncontextuality in behavioral systems.

Findings

Responses show no contextuality in the experiment.

Stimuli influence each other's response distributions.

Context affects response distribution but not contextuality.

Abstract

The Contextuality-by-Default (CbD) theory allows one to separate contextuality from context-dependent errors and violations of selective influences (aka "no-signaling" or "no-disturbance" principles). This makes the theory especially applicable to behavioral systems, where violations of selective influences are ubiquitous. For cyclic systems with binary random variables, CbD provides necessary and sufficient conditions for noncontextuality, and these conditions are known to be breached in certain quantum systems. We apply the theory of cyclic systems to a psychophysical double-detection experiment, in which observers were asked to determine presence or absence of a signal property in each of two simultaneously presented stimuli. The results, as in all other behavioral and social systems previous analyzed, indicate lack of contextuality. The role of context in double-detection is confined to lack of selectiveness: the distribution of responses to one of the stimuli is influenced by the state of the other stimulus.