This volume presents a series of studies that expand laws, invariants, and principles of psychophysics beyond its classical domain of sensation. This book's goal is to demonstrate the extent of the domain of psychophysics, ranging from sensory processes, through sensory memory and short-term memory issues, to the interaction between sensation and action. The dynamics and timing of human performance are a further important issue within this extended framework of psychophysics: Given the similarity of the various cortical areas in terms of their neuroanatomical structure, it is an important question whether this similarity is paralleled by a similarity of processes. These issues are addressed by the contributions in the present volume using state-of-the-art research methods in behavioral research, psychophysiology, and mathematical modeling. The book is divided into four sections. Part I presents contributions concerning the classical domain of psychophysical judgment. The next two parts are concerned with elementary and higher-order processes and the concluding section deals with psychophysical models. The sections are introduced by guest editorials contributed by independent authors. These editorials present the authors' personals view on the respective section, providing an integrated account of the various contributions or highlighting their focus of interest among them. While also voicing their own and sometimes different point of view, they contribute to the process of discussion that makes science so exciting. This volume should be of great interest to advanced students in neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, neuropsychology, and related areas who seek to evaluate the range and power of psychological work today. Established scientists in those fields will also appreciate the variety of issues addressed within the same methodological framework and their multiple interconnections and stimulating "cross-talk."

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.

Psychophysical theory exists in two distinct forms -- one ascribes the explanation of phenomena and empirical laws to sensory processes. Context effects arising through the use of particular methods are an unwanted nuisance whose influence must be eliminated so that one isolates the "true" sensory scale. The other considers psychophysics only in terms of cognitive variables such as the judgment strategies induced by instructions and response biases. Sensory factors play a minor role in cognitive approaches. This work admits the validity of both forms of theory by arguing that the same empirical phenomena should be conceptualized in two alternative, apparently contradictory, ways. This acceptance of opposites is necessary because some empirical phenomena are best explained in terms of sensory processes, while others are best ascribed to central causes. The complementarity theory stresses the "mutually completing" nature of two distinct models. The first assigns importance to populations of sensory neurons acting in the aggregate and is formulated to deal with sensory effects. The second assigns importance to judgment uncertainty and to the subject strategies induced by experimental procedures. This model is formulated to explain context effects. Throughout the text, the exposition is interlaced with mathematics, graphs, and computer simulations designed to reveal the complementary nature of psychophysical explanations.

This book defines the terminology used in the fields of sensation and perception and describes the biological and physical bases required for understanding sensory experiences. It offers more specifically an introduction to the study of psychophysics, auditory perception, visual perception, and attention, and discusses the basic concepts and mechanisms used to interpret different perceptual phenomena. Featured topics in this book: Laws of psychophysics, including the discrimination law of Weber and Stevens’ power law. Psychophysical methods and signal detection theory. Hearing music and speech. Color, form and depth perception The role of attention in perception. Sensory disorders. Psychology of Perception is an essential resource for undergraduate and graduate students interested in studying sensation and perception.

Sensory Processes: The New Psychophysics describes, summarizes, and theorizes on the application of psychophysics to the study of sensory processes. This book deals with significant issues in sensory psychology, which is mainly by treating sensory dimensions and attributes as measurable quantities. Organized into seven chapters, this book starts with an overview of the fundamental methods for evaluating the magnitudes of sensation with emphasis direct scaling methods. This text then explains the advantages of direct scaling procedures in providing psychophysical and sensory-physical information. Other chapters consider the parameters of temporal and spatial distribution of the stimulus. This book discusses as well the other significant variables that determine sensitivity, particularly compositional variables that refer to wavelength and frequency of light and sound. The final chapter deals with several persistent issues and unresolved questions in the realm of sensory scaling. Sensory psychologists, sensory scientists, researchers, and graduate students will find this book useful.

The problems of psychophysics -- the scientific study of the relationship between stimulus and sensation -- constitute some of the most basic problems of modern psychology. This book introduces students to the fundamentals of classical and modern psychophysics.

The publication in 1957 of S.S. Stevens' famous paper, On the psychophysical law, ignited a controversy which has continued ever since relating to people's subjective judgements of physical reality. Why is it that the perception of sensation can diverge so sharply from the magnitude of the stimulus? How should sensation be measured? Donald Laming brings together a diversity of ideas and a wealth of experimental evidence, and provides a challenging new perspective on the question which has fragmented the research community for nearly 40 years.