Psychophysics In Action

Gunnar A. V. Borg was born in Stockholm on 28. November 1927. Educated at Stockholm University, he obtained his Ph. D. from the University of Lund in 1962. Subsequently he held various teaching and research appointments at the University of Umea in northern Sweden, where he also served as President of the Graduate School of Social Work and Public Administration in 1966-1967. In 1971 he was appointed Professor at Stockholm University, where he headed the Institute of Applied Psychology for over a decade. Since 1980 he has been at Stockholm University's Department of Psychology, and in 1987 he received a Professorship in Perception and Psychophysics. Over the last 20 years he has held several visiting appointments abroad, particularly in the USA, and has lectured at many universi ties both in and outside Europe. From the beginning of Gunnar's research career, his thinking has been affected by Gestalt psychology as well as by some principles of theoretical philosophy. The former has not only influenced Gunnar's early unconventional works on "gestalt strength" but also one of his major areas of thinking, the notion of "total perceived effort," which can be seen as a "gestalt" underlain by a variety of sensory data. The philosophical influence is obvious: Gunnar's papers reveal an abiding concern with epistemological issues, issues that are linked to his persistent attempts at making interindividual comparisons.

Brings together cutting edge experiments and theoretical treatments regarding space, time and motion in visual neuroscience and psychophysics.

Psychophysics: A Practical Introduction, Second Edition, is the primary scientific tool for understanding how the physical world of colors, sounds, odors, movements, and shapes translates into the sensory world of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell; in other words, how matter translates into mind. This timely revision provides a unique introduction to the techniques for researching and understanding how the brain translates the external physical world to the internal world of sensation. The revision expands and refines coverage of the basic tools of psychophysics research and better integrates the theory with the supporting software. The new edition continues to be the only book to combine, in a single volume, the principles underlying the science of psychophysical measurement and the practical tools necessary to analyze data from psychophysical experiments. The book, written in a tutorial style, will appeal to new researchers as well as to seasoned veterans. This introduction to psychophysics research methods will be of interest to students, scholars and researchers within sensory neuroscience, vision research, behavioral neuroscience, and the cognitive sciences. Presents a large variety of analytical methods explained for the non-expert Provides a novel classification scheme for psychophysics experiments Includes a new software package for collecting and analyzing psychophysical data Disseminates the pros and cons of different psychophysical procedures Contains practical tips for designing psychophysical experiments

Gunnar A. V. Borg was born in Stockholm on 28. November 1927. Educated at Stockholm University, he obtained his Ph. D. from the University of Lund in 1962. Subsequently he held various teaching and research appointments at the University of Umea in northern Sweden, where he also served as President of the Graduate School of Social Work and Public Administration in 1966-1967. In 1971 he was appointed Professor at Stockholm University, where he headed the Institute of Applied Psychology for over a decade. Since 1980 he has been at Stockholm University's Department of Psychology, and in 1987 he received a Professorship in Perception and Psychophysics. Over the last 20 years he has held several visiting appointments abroad, particularly in the USA, and has lectured at many universi ties both in and outside Europe. From the beginning of Gunnar's research career, his thinking has been affected by Gestalt psychology as well as by some principles of theoretical philosophy. The former has not only influenced Gunnar's early unconventional works on "gestalt strength" but also one of his major areas of thinking, the notion of "total perceived effort," which can be seen as a "gestalt" underlain by a variety of sensory data. The philosophical influence is obvious: Gunnar's papers reveal an abiding concern with epistemological issues, issues that are linked to his persistent attempts at making interindividual comparisons.

Originally published in 1992, this work compliments and extends the theory and results of nonlinear psychophysics – an original approach created by the author. It breaks with the traditional mathematics used in the experimental psychology of sensation and draws on what is popularly known as chaos theory and its extension into neural networks. Topical and innovative in its approach, it integrates a diversity of topics previously treated separately into one framework. The properties of the mathematics used are illustrated in the context of substantive problems in psychophysics; thus, it builds strong new bridges between the dynamics of mass action in psychophysical processes and the broader phenomena of sensation. No other treatments of the topic take quite this approach; the use of systems theory, rather than traditional equations of psychophysics dating from the mid-nineteenth century, offers a striking contrast in both theory construction and data analysis.

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 third edition of a classic text which was first published in 1976 is the only comprehensive, up-to-date presentation of psychophysics currently available. It has been used by undergraduate and graduate students, and scholars throughout the world and is consistently thought of as the best single source for learning the basic principles of psychophysics. The coverage of the field is comprehensive, including topics ranging from the classical methods of threshold measurement, to the modern methods of detection theory, to psychophysical scaling of sensation magnitude. The approach is one in which methods, theories, and applications are described for each experimental procedure. New features found in this third edition include: * methodological and theoretical contributions made in the field during this time period, * 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 for measuring the observer's sensitivity of criterion and an expanded discussion of category scaling including the range frequency model and verbally labeled categories, and * 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.