Book Description

Handbook of Perception, Volume II: Psychophysical Judgment and Measurement brings together a very large, diverse, and widely scattered literature on human perception, with emphasis on psychophysical judgement and measurement. The book reviews the history of research on choice, judgement, and measurement in order to provide a background for contemporary work. This volume is organized into five sections encompassing 14 chapters and begins with a historical background on psychophysics and the evolution of thinking about the central measurement problem in judgement. The basic psychological context in which choice and judgement occur is considered next, touching on topics such as the problem of information selection and the sources of bias and variability in judgemental processes in relation to memory. The chapters that follow discuss the theoretical frame of measurement models and their applications. In particular, examples of algebraic fundamental measurement, algebraic derived measurement, and probabilistic derived measurement are given. The book also introduces the reader to various psychophysical scaling methods and theories of scaling. This book will serve as a basic source and reference work for psychologists and natural scientists, as well as for anyone in the arts or sciences or those who are interested in human perception.