Psychophysical Judgment And Measurement

Handbook of Perception, Volume II: Psychophysical Judgment and Measurement brings together a very large, diverse, and widely scattered literature on human perception, with emphasis on psychophysical judgement and measurement. The book reviews the history of research on choice, judgement, and measurement in order to provide a background for contemporary work. This volume is organized into five sections encompassing 14 chapters and begins with a historical background on psychophysics and the evolution of thinking about the central measurement problem in judgement. The basic psychological context in which choice and judgement occur is considered next, touching on topics such as the problem of information selection and the sources of bias and variability in judgemental processes in relation to memory. The chapters that follow discuss the theoretical frame of measurement models and their applications. In particular, examples of algebraic fundamental measurement, algebraic derived measurement, and probabilistic derived measurement are given. The book also introduces the reader to various psychophysical scaling methods and theories of scaling. This book will serve as a basic source and reference work for psychologists and natural scientists, as well as for anyone in the arts or sciences or those who are interested in human perception.

Vol. 2.

Measurement, Judgment, and Decision Making provides an excellent introduction to measurement, which is one of the most basic issues of the science of psychology and the key to science. Written by leading researchers, the book covers measurement, psychophysical scaling, multidimensional scaling, stimulus categorization, and behavioral decision making. Each chapter provides a useful handbook summary and unlocks the door for a scholar who desires entry to that field. Any psychologist who manipulates an independent variable that affects a psychological construct or who uses a numerical dependent variable to measure a psychological construct will want to study this book. Written by leading researchers in fields of measurement, psychophysical scaling, multidimensional scaling, stimulus categorization, and behavioral decision making Provides basic definitions and summaries of theories Presents summaries and citations to relevant literature Contains new developments, current controversies, and open questions Explains relationships among fields and historical links

Published in 1982, Social Attitudes and Psychophysical Measurement is a valuable contribution to the field of Cognitive Psychology.

Measurement and Representation of Sensations offers a glimpse into the most sophisticated current mathematical approaches to psychophysical problems. In this book, editors Hans Colonius and Ehtibar N. Dzhafarov, top scholars in the field, present a broad spectrum of innovative approaches and techniques to classical problems in psychophysics at different levels of stimulus complexity. The chapters emphasize rigorous mathematical constructions to define psychophysical concepts and relate them to observable phenomena. The techniques presented, both deterministic and probabilistic, are all original and recent. Subjects addressed throughout the six chapters of this volume include: *computing subjective distances from discriminability; *a new psychophysical theory of intensity judgments; *computing subjective distances from two discriminability functions; *an alternative to the model-building approach based on observable probabilities; and *possible forms of perceptual separability developed within a generalization of General Recognition Theory. Measurement and Representation of Sensations is a valuable text for both behavioral scientists and applied mathematicians.

Measurements with persons are those in which human perception and interpretation are used for measuring complex, holistic quantities and qualities, which are perceived by the human brain and mind. Providing means for reproducible measurement of parameters such as pleasure and pain has important implications in evaluating all kind of products, services, and conditions. This book inaugurates a new era for this subject: a multi- and inter-disciplinary volume in which world-renowned scientists from the psychological, physical, biological, and social sciences reach a common understanding of measurement theory and methods. In the first section, generic theoretical and methodological issues are treated, including the conceptual basis of measurement in the various fields involved; the development of formal, representational, and probabilistic theories; the approach to experimentation; and the theories, models, and methods for multidimensional problems. In the second section, several implementation areas are presented, including sound, visual, skin, and odor perception, functional brain imagining, body language and emotions, and, finally, the use of measurements in decision making Measurement with Persons will appeal to a wide audience across a range of sciences, including general psychology and psychophysics, measurement theory, metrology and instrumentation, neurophysiology, engineering, biology, and chemistry.

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.