This book describes the methods, theories, and applications of classical and modern psychophysics. It was written for advanced undergraduate students with some background in statistics; graduate students may also find it useful for obtaining an overview of the field. I hope Psychophysics: The Fundamentals will be useful for courses in perception, general experimental psychology, and quantitative methods.
Twelve years have passed since the publication of the second edition of this book. In this third edition, I have included many of the methodological and theoretical contributions made in the field during this time period. I have also expanded on some of the topics found in the first and second editions. The major additions found in this book are descriptions of adaptive procedures for measuring thresholds, context effects in scaling, theory of quantal fluctuations, multidimensional scaling, nonmetric scaling of sensory differences, and the relationship between the size of the DL and the slope of the sensation magnitude function. New methods have also been included for measuring the observer's sensitivity and criterion and the discussion of category scaling has been expanded to include the range frequency model and verbally labeled categories. Methods used to control the observer's nonlinear use of numbers in magnitude estimation such as line-length scaling, magnitude matching, master scaling and category-ratio scaling are described. Finally, a glossary of terms is added.
I wish to acknowledge the special efforts of Sandy Bolanowski, Gene Galanter, Neil Macmillan, Larry Marks, Joe Sturr, and John Swets in providing me with their constructive criticism and helpful suggestions after reading various versions and sections of the manuscript. I would also like to thank my students for their support and helpful suggestions, Nancy Wichmann for her typing and help in putting the final manuscript together, Chris Ingersoll for her excellent artwork, and Marcy Pruiksma, Book Production Editor, for coordinating different facets of this project.
-- George A. Gescheider