Perception of the form of stimulus increment as a method in assessment of the psychophysical relationship.

Abstract

Among numerous procedures for determination of the psychophysical relation, one approach has seldom been applied. Essential in this method is to present a set of stimuli whose intensity increases in fixed time following different forms. The objective stimulus increment, which the subjects perceive as linear growth directly, represents the inverse psychophysical relation. In this paper the method was tested in the fields of click frequency and sound pressure. This procedure was named "Perception of the Form of Stimulus Increment in Time". In comparison to other psychophysical approaches, this one has several advantages. The principal ones are the following: (1) In assessing the psychophysical relation it is not necessary to try to measure the perceptual magnitude; and (2) the psychophysical relation is directly determined by its dynamic pattern. In this paper modifications to the method are reported which facilitate the subject's task and avoid some differences in subjects' individual approaches to the task. The modified procedure leads to results satisfactory independent of the influence of the factors irrelevant to the psychophysical relationship.