Psychophysics

A Practical Introduction

Frederick A.A. Kingdom, Nicolaas Prins

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780124071568
• eBook ISBN: 9780080993812
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

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 - Disseminates the pros and cons of different psychophysical procedures - Contains practical tips for designing psychophysical experiments

Chapter 1

Introduction and Aims

Frederick A.A. Kingdom¹, and Nicolaas Prins^{2 1}McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada ²University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA

Abstract

This chapter introduces psychophysics as a methodology, discusses the aims of the book, outlines how the book is organized, and summarizes its contents. The discussion of aims focuses on the need for a book that provides both the theoretical background and practical tools necessary for analyzing data from psychophysics experiments and the importance of making accessible to both newcomers and seasoned practitioners alike difficult psychophysical concepts and analyses. For the practical tools the chapter introduces the reader to Palamedes, the toolbox of MATLAB software developed by the authors for psychophysical data analysis.

Keywords

Palamedes; Psychophysics; Psychophysics data analysis

Outline

1.1 What is Psychophysics? 1

1.2 Aims of the Book 1

1.3 Organization of the Book 2

1.4 What's New in the Second Edition? 5

References 9

1.1. What is Psychophysics?

According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, psychophysics “… quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they affect.” The term was first coined by Gustav Theodor Fechner, who in his Elements of Psychophysics (1860/1966) set out the principles of psychophysical measurement, describing the various procedures used by experimentalists to map out the relationship between matter and mind. Although psychophysics refers to a methodology, it is also a research area in its own right, and much effort continues to be devoted to developing new psychophysical techniques and new methods for analyzing psychophysical data.

Psychophysics can be applied to any sensory system, whether vision, hearing, touch, taste, or smell. This book primarily draws on the visual system to illustrate the principles of psychophysics, but the principles are applicable to all sensory domains.

1.2. Aims of the Book

Broadly speaking, the book has three aims. The first is to provide newcomers to psychophysics with an overview of different psychophysical procedures in order to help them select the appropriate designs and analyses for their experiments. The second aim is to direct readers to the software tools, in the form of Palamedes, for analyzing psychophysical data. This is intended for both newcomers and experienced researchers alike. The third aim is to explain the theory behind the analyses. Again both newcomers and experienced researchers should benefit from the detailed expositions of the bulk of the underlying theory. To this end we have made every effort to make accessible the theory behind a wide range of psychophysical procedures, analytical principles, and mathematical computations, such as Bayesian curve fitting; the calculation of d-primes (dʹ); summation theory; maximum likelihood difference scaling; goodness-of-fit measurement; bootstrap analysis; and likelihood-ratio testing, to name but a few. In short, the book is intended to be both practical and pedagogical.

The inclusion of the description of the Palamedes tools, placed in this edition in separate boxes alongside the main text, will hopefully offer the reader something more than is provided by traditional textbooks, such as the excellent Psychophysics: The Fundamentals by Gescheider (1997). If there is a downside, however, it is that we do not always delve as deeply into the relationship between psychophysical measurement and sensory function as The Fundamentals does, except when necessary to explain a particular psychophysical procedure or set of procedures. In this regard A Practical Introduction is not intended as a replacement for other textbooks on psychophysics but as a complement to them, and readers are encouraged to read other relevant texts alongside our own. Two noteworthy recent additions to the literature on psychophysics are Knoblauch and Maloney's (2012) Modeling Psychophysical Data in R and Lu and Dosher's (2013) Visual Psychophysics.

Our approach of combining the practical and the pedagogical into a single book may not be to everyone's taste. Doubtless some would prefer to have the description of the software routines put elsewhere. However, we believe that by describing the software alongside the theory, newcomers will be able to get a quick handle on the nuts and bolts of psychophysics methods, the better to then delve into the underlying theory if and when they choose.

1.3. Organization of the Book

The book can be roughly divided into two parts. Chapters 2 and 3 provide an overall framework and detailed breakdown of the variety of psychophysical procedures available to the researcher. Chapters 4–9 are the technical chapters. They describe the theory and implementation for six specialist topics: psychometric functions; adaptive methods; signal detection measures; summation measures; scaling methods...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Authors
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Introduction and Aims
• Chapter 2. Classifying Psychophysical Experiments
• Chapter 3. Varieties of Psychophysical Procedures
• Chapter 4. Psychometric Functions
• Chapter 5. Adaptive Methods
• Chapter 6. Signal Detection Measures
• Chapter 7. Summation Measures
• Chapter 8. Scaling Methods
• Chapter 9. Model Comparisons
• Quick Reference Guide
• List of Acronyms
• Index