Psychophysics
February 2nd, 2009 by logicalsprocketPsychophysics is a subdiscipline of psychology dealing with the relationship between physical stimuli and their subjective correlates, or percepts. Psychophysics has been described variously as “the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation”[1] or, more completely, as “the analysis of perceptual processes by studying the effect on a subject’s experience or behaviour of systematically varying the properties of a stimulus along one or more physical dimensions.”[2] It is a general-purpose theory that can be applied to any sensory system. The techniques of “classical” psychophysics are still widely used, although the theoretical background is heavily influenced by Signal detection theory.[3]