Just-noticeable difference

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n psychophysics, a just noticeable difference, customarily abbreviated !ith lo!ercase
letters as jnd, is the smallest detectable difference bet!een a starting and secondary level
of a particular sensory stimulus.
"#$
t is also kno!n as the difference limen or the
differential threshold.
[edit] Explanation
For many sensory modalities, over a !ide range of stimulus magnitudes sufficiently far
from the upper and lo!er limits of perception, the %&nd% is a fi'ed proportion of the
reference sensory level, and so the ratio of the &nd(reference is roughly constant )that is
the &nd is a constant proportion(percentage of the reference level*. +easured in physical
units, !e have
!here is the original intensity of stimulation, is the addition to it re,uired for the
difference to be perceived )the jnd*, and k is a constant. This rule !as first discovered by
-rnst .einrich Weber, in e'periments on the thresholds of perception of lifted !eights. /
theoretical rationale )not universally accepted* !as subse,uently provided by 0ustav
Fechner, so the rule is therefore kno!n either as the Weber 1a! or as the Weber2Fechner
la!3 the constant k is called the Weber constant. t is true, at least to a good
appro'imation, of many but not all sensory dimensions, for e'ample the brightness of
lights, and the intensity and the pitch of sounds. t is not true, ho!ever, of the !avelength
of light. 4tanley 4mith 4tevens argued that it !ould hold only for !hat he called
prothetic sensory continua, !here change of input takes the form of increase in intensity
or something obviously analogous3 it !ould not hold for metathetic continua, !here
change of input produces a ,ualitative rather than a ,uantitative change of the percept.
The &nd is a statistical, rather than an e'act ,uantity: from trial to trial, the difference that
a given person notices !ill vary some!hat, and it is therefore necessary to conduct many
trials in order to determine the threshold. The &nd usually reported is the difference that a
person notices on 567 of trials. f a different proportion is used, this should be included
in the description8for e'ample one might report the value of the 9:57 &nd9.
+odern approaches to psychophysics, for e'ample signal detection theory, imply that the
observed &nd, even in this statistical sense, is not an absolute ,uantity, but !ill depend on
situational and motivational as !ell as perceptual factors.
The &nd formula has an ob&ective interpretation )implied at the start of this entry* as the
disparity bet!een levels of the presented stimulus that is detected on 567 of occasions by
a particular observed response )Torgerson, #;5<*, rather than !hat is sub&ectively
9noticed9 or as a difference in magnitudes of consciously e'perienced %sensations.% This
567=discriminated disparity can be used as a universal unit of measurement of the
psychological distance of the level of a feature in an ob&ect or situation and an internal
standard of comparison in memory, such as the %template% for a category or the %norm% of
recognition )>ooth ? Freeman, #;;@*. The &nd=scaled distances from norm can be
combined among observed and inferred psychophysical functions to generate diagnostics
among hypothesised information=transforming )mental* processes mediating observed
,uantitative &udgments )Aichardson ? >ooth, #;;@*.
[edit] References
#. ^ Weber's Law of Just Noticeable Difference, University of 4outh Bakota:
http:((!!!.usd.edu(psyc@6#(Webers1a!.htm
>ooth, B./., ? Freeman, A.P.J. )#;:@*. Biscriminative measurement of feature
integration. /cta Psychologica )/msterdam*. Aichardon, C., ? >ooth, B./. )#;;@*. /cta
Psychologica )/msterdam*. Torgerson, W.4. )#;5<*. Theory and method of measurement.
Ce! Dork: Wiley.
[edit] See also
/bsolute threshold
1imen
+inimal negation operator
Psychometric function
4ensor resolution
Eisual perception
Aetrieved from 9http:((en.!ikipedia.org(!iki(Just=noticeableFdifference9
Gategories: Perception H Psychophysics
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