PSYCHOPHYSICS

MEHREEN AFTAB
• Psychophysics is the subfield of psychology devoted to the study of physical stimuli and
their interaction with sensory systems.

• The science of establishing quantitative relationships between physical stimulations and

psychological events.

• Psychophysical tasks have been extensively used to draw conclusions on how information is
processed by the visual and other sensory systems.
• Edwin G. Boring (1950), the eminent historian of experimental psychology, claims that
the introduction of techniques to measure the relation between internal impressions (the
psycho of psychophysics) and the external world (the physics) marked the onset of
scientific psychology.
• Gustav Fechner formalized the psychophysical methods, which measure attributes of the
world in terms of their psychological values
• showed that psychological judgments varied in particular ways according to the intensity
of the stimulus particular sensory modality of stimulus
• You may think it simple to decide the loudness or painfulness of stimuli. However, it
turns out that there is rarely a direct one-to-one relation between physical values and
psychological values.
• If a rock band turned up its amplifiers to produce twice as much energy as it had
produced before (a doubling of the physical units), this twofold increase of energy would
not result in listeners experiencing a sound twice as loud as before. For a listener to judge
the sound to be twice as loud, the energy level would have to be increased roughly 10
times.
• The psychophysical relation between stimulus and judgment depends on the particular
sensory modality that is stimulated. Pain judgments in response to increases in electrical
intensity of shocks applied to the skin grow much more rapidly than do loudness
judgments in response to increases in sound energy. For one shock to be judged twice as
painful as another, the intensity of the shock needs to have been increased about one-
third.
IMPORTANT CONCEPTS TO UNDERSTAND

Operational definitions
• describe the procedures used to produce a concept and allow us to communicate successfully
about the concepts we are studying.
• An operational definition specifies concrete, replicable procedures designed to
represent a construct
• An operational definition is a formula for building a construct in such a way that other
scientists can duplicate it, by specifying the operations used to produce and measure it.
• What does it mean when a subject reports that he or she detects a painful stimulus?
 measurement scales
• the assignment of numbers or names to objects and their attributes. How do we determine
whether one light intensity appears twice as bright as another?
small-n designs
• those based on small numbers of subjects.
• In this context, we explain why it is often appropriate to formulate psychophysical laws that
are based on large numbers of observations but that are taken from a small number of
observers (the small n).
OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF THRESHOLDS:
CLASSICAL PSYCHOPHYSICS
• In common language, a threshold is the part of a doorway you step through or over to
enter a room.
• Classical psychophysicists believed that stimuli had to cross such a (hypothetical) barrier
to enter the brain or the mind.
method of limits
• If we performed an experiment using the method of limits to determine the threshold for a
tone, results would look like those shown in Table
• If the observer were a perfect stimulus detector, the point at which responses switched
from “yes” to “no” (or vice versa) would always be the same. This ideal point would be
the threshold.
• A threshold defined this way, based on an observer’s ability to detect a signal, is called an
absolute threshold, since the yes-no judgments are not based on a comparison of two
stimuli but are absolute judgments about a single stimulus.
• An absolute threshold is the smallest amount of stimulation needed for a person to
detect that stimulus. This can be applied to all our senses:
• The minimum intensity of light we can see
• The lowest volume of a sound we can hear
• The smallest concentration of particles we can smell
• The smallest concentration of particles we can taste
• The lightest touch we can feel
EXERCISE
 Difference threshold/  Just Noticeable Difference
is the minimum amount by which stimulus intensity must be changed in order to
produce a noticeable difference in sensory experience.

A difference threshold is the minimum required difference between two stimuli for a person to
notice change. The difference threshold is also called just noticeable difference.

• a comparison is made between constant unchanging stimulus and a series of changing stimuli.
• The traditional example of a difference threshold requires the observer to lift pairs of weights—
one weight always remaining the same—and to judge if the new weight is heavier, lighter, or
equal to the standard weight.
• One property that Weber determined was that the magnitude of the difference threshold
increases with increases in the magnitude of the standard stimulus.
Weber - Fechner law
If you lift up and hold a weight of 2.0 kg, you will notice that it takes some effort. If you add to
this weight another 0.05 kg and lift, you may not notice any difference between the apparent or
subjective weight between the 2.0 kg and the 2.1 kg weights.
If you keep adding weight, you may find that you will only notice the difference when the
additional weight is equal to 0.2 kg. The increment threshold for detecting the difference from a
2.0 kg weight is 0.2 kg. The just noticeable difference (JND) is 0.2 kg.
Now start with a 5.0 kg weight. If you add weight to this, you will find that the just noticeable
difference is 0.5 kg. It takes 0.5 kg added to the 5.0 kg weight for you to notice an apparent
difference.
• For the weight of magnitude, I, of 2.0 kg, the increment threshold for detecting a
difference was a ∆I (pronounces, delta I) of 0.2 kg.

• For the weight of magnitude, I = 5.0 kg, the increment threshold I = ∆0.5 kg.

• The ratio of ∆I/I for both instances (0.2/2.0 = 0.5/5.0 = 0.1) is the same. This is Weber's
Law.
SMALL-N DESIGN

• typical experiment in psychology measures the behavior of a large number of participant

because research participants differ substantially from one another in various complex
psychological characteristics, such as personality and IQ.
• Since most psychophysical experiments involve somewhat less complex psychological
processes that are studied in well-controlled settings, fewer subjects are often used.
• Psychophysical research often relies on small-n designs, in which a large number of
tightly controlled observations are made on a small number of observers.
ASSIGNMENT 2

• Why small n-design is used in psychophysics ?

TRICHROMATIC THEORY OF COLOR VISION

• According to the trichromatic theory of color vision, also known as the Young-Helmholtz
theory of color vision, there are three receptors in the retina that are responsible for
the perception of color.
• One receptor is sensitive to the color green, another to the color blue, and a third to the color
red. The combinations of these three colors produce all of the colors that we are capable of
perceiving.
• Researchers suggest that people are able to distinguish between as many as seven million
different colors.
• cone receptors of the eye were either short-wavelength (blue), medium-wavelength (
green), or long-wavelength (red). 
• The ratio of each color to the other then determines the exact color that we see.
• Helmholtz discovered that people with normal color vision need three wavelengths of
light to create different colors through a series of experiments.
• The brain must interpret information about both the wavelength and the intensity of the
incoming stimulation. By comparing the input from each cone that has been stimulated,
the brain can interpret the color of the source of that stimulation.
• Helmholtz used color-matching experiments where participants would alter the amounts
of three different wavelengths of light to match a test color.
• Participants could not match the colors if they used only two wavelengths but could
match any color in the spectrum if they used three.
• The theory became known as the Young-Helmholtz theory of color vision.