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. 2016 Jan 15;125:756–766. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.11.009

Supplementary Fig. 3.

Supplementary Fig. 3

Effects of transients on efficiency of estimating a single trial-type (top row) and efficiency for two randomly-intermixed trial-types (bottom row) when SOA = 3 s. See legend of Supplementary Fig. 1 for more details.

Effects of transients on efficiency of estimating a single trial-type (top row) and efficiency for two randomly-intermixed trial-types (bottom row) when SOA = 3 s. See legend of Supplementary Fig. 1 for more details.

Transients at the start and end of the session, which correspond to the second, smaller cluster of points near x = 0 in the top row, help to stabilize the slope of the regression line, relative to Supplementary Fig. 2, even though only representing a small fraction of the total number of scans (the session is now 45 min long). This explains the second peak at short SOA in Fig. 2A (but not Fig. 2B) of main paper.

Transients at the start and end of the session, which correspond to the second, smaller cluster of points near x = 0 in the top row, help to stabilize the slope of the regression line, relative to Supplementary Fig. 2, even though only representing a small fraction of the total number of scans (the session is now 45 min long). This explains the second peak at short SOA in Fig. 2A (but not Fig. 2B) of main paper.

The SOA in the lower panels is a randomized intermixed design of two trial-types, but one of which has a mean and standard deviation of 0 (equivalent to a “null event” in the terminology of Josephs and Henson, 1999). This jittering dramatically increases efficiency (cf. Panel D with Supplementary Figs. 1A and 2A), consistent with standard efficiency theory, which explains the optimally short SOA in Fig. 2D of the main paper. Note also that transients also have little effect in such designs.

The SOA in the lower panels is a randomized intermixed design of two trial-types, but one of which has a mean and standard deviation of 0 (equivalent to a “null event” in the terminology of Josephs and Henson, 1999). This jittering dramatically increases efficiency (cf. Panel D with Supplementary Figs. 1A and 2A), consistent with standard efficiency theory, which explains the optimally short SOA in Fig. 2D of the main paper. Note also that transients also have little effect in such designs.