A test of significance in functional quadratic regression

Abstract: We consider a quadratic functional regression model in which a scalar response depends on a functional predictor; the common functional linear model is a special case. We wish to test the significance of the nonlinear term in the model. We develop a testing method which is based on projecting the observations onto a suitably chosen finite dimensional space using functional principal component analysis. The asymptotic behavior of our testing procedure is established. A simulation study shows that the testing procedure has good size and power with finite sample sizes. We then apply our test to a data set provided by Tecator, which consists of near-infrared absorbance spectra and fat content of meat.