The plan for this volume emerged during the international Leipzig conference commemorating the centenary of the death of Gustav Fechner. The contributors suggested that while many features of modern psychological theory were anticipated by Fechner, many new theoretical approaches owe much more to him than often is realized. As such, they decided to honor Fechner by evaluating his own contribution to the founding of psychology and psychoanalysis, by deepening the foundations of psychological theories of consciousness, perception, and choice, and by using the analysis of time to create a new appreciation of constraints that bind mental processes together. Thus, this volume spans an extraordinary range of psychological topics, from hermeneutics to the time-quantum basis for mental processes, in a way that would both amaze and delight Fechner. Moreover, the international reach of his pioneering ideas can be seen from the current locations of the contributors. The span from Japan to the United States to Holland to Germany and to Israel provides a global measure of Fechner's scientific legacy.

Invariances in Human Information Processing examines and identifies processing universals and how they are implemented in elementary judgemental processes. This edited collection offers evidence that these universals can be extracted and identified from observing law-like principles in perception, cognition, and action. Addressing memory operations, development, and conceptual learning, this book considers basic and complex meso- and makro-stages of information processing. Chapter authors provide theoretical accounts of cognitive processing that may offer tools for identification of functional components in brain activity in cognitive neuroscience

This volume presents a series of studies that expand laws, invariants, and principles of psychophysics beyond its classical domain of sensation. This book's goal is to demonstrate the extent of the domain of psychophysics, ranging from sensory processes, through sensory memory and short-term memory issues, to the interaction between sensation and action. The dynamics and timing of human performance are a further important issue within this extended framework of psychophysics: Given the similarity of the various cortical areas in terms of their neuroanatomical structure, it is an important question whether this similarity is paralleled by a similarity of processes. These issues are addressed by the contributions in the present volume using state-of-the-art research methods in behavioral research, psychophysiology, and mathematical modeling. The book is divided into four sections. Part I presents contributions concerning the classical domain of psychophysical judgment. The next two parts are concerned with elementary and higher-order processes and the concluding section deals with psychophysical models. The sections are introduced by guest editorials contributed by independent authors. These editorials present the authors' personals view on the respective section, providing an integrated account of the various contributions or highlighting their focus of interest among them. While also voicing their own and sometimes different point of view, they contribute to the process of discussion that makes science so exciting. This volume should be of great interest to advanced students in neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, neuropsychology, and related areas who seek to evaluate the range and power of psychological work today. Established scientists in those fields will also appreciate the variety of issues addressed within the same methodological framework and their multiple interconnections and stimulating "cross-talk."

Information-Processing Channels in the Tactile Sensory System addresses the fundamental question of whether sensory channels, similar to those known to operate in vision and audition, also operate in the sense of touch. Based on the results of psychophysical and neurophysiological experimentation the authors make a powerful case that channels operate in the processing of mechanical stimulation of the highly sensitive glabrous skin of the hand. According to the multichannel model presented in this monograph, each channel, with its specific type of mechanoreceptor and afferent nerve fiber, responds optiimally to particular aspects of the tactile stimulus. It is further proposed that the tactile perception of objects results from the combined activity of the individual tactile channels. This work is important because it provides researchers and students in the field of sensory neuroscience with a comprehensive model that enhances our understanding of tactile perception.

Our lives are informed by perceptual and cognitive processes at all levels, from instrumental learning to metaphorical discourse to memorial representation. Yet, historically, these two branches of experimental psychology, perception and cognition, have developed separately using independent methods of experimentation and analysis. This volume is motivated by the assumption that a fundamental integration of the two fields is fruitful methodologically and indispensable theoretically. It explores how the notion of psychophysics aligned with cognitive processes shapes the study of perception and cognition, and illuminates a variety of contemporary research issues from a novel theoretical perspective. The papers raise conceptual and metatheoretical issues against the background of relevant empirical data.The authors provide a virtually narrative account of the most recent developments in their respective fields of expertise in psychophysics and cognitive psychology. Hence, this volume gives the interested reader an opportunity to reflect critically upon some of the current issues defining the two domains and their conjunction. Topics discussed include the psychology and psychophysics of similarity, the psychophysics of visual memory and cognitive factors in judgment. The emerging notion of cognitive psychophysics may well warrant the attention of experts in the field.

The Psychophysics of Learning presents a learning system design approach that is formulated by the strategies and techniques the brain uses to process external information and make sense of that information to the learning ecology of all learners.

V. Methodology: E. J. Wagenmakers (Volume Editor) Topics covered include methods and models in categorization; cultural consensus theory; network models for clinical psychology; response time modeling; analyzing neural time series data; models and methods for reinforcement learning; convergent methods of memory research; theories for discriminating signal from noise; bayesian cognitive modeling; mathematical modeling in cognition and cognitive neuroscience; the stop-signal paradigm; hypothesis testing and statistical inference; model comparison in psychology; fmri; neural recordings; open science; neural networks and neurocomputational modeling; serial versus parallel processing; methods in psychophysics.

Measurement, Judgment, and Decision Making provides an excellent introduction to measurement, which is one of the most basic issues of the science of psychology and the key to science. Written by leading researchers, the book covers measurement, psychophysical scaling, multidimensional scaling, stimulus categorization, and behavioral decision making. Each chapter provides a useful handbook summary and unlocks the door for a scholar who desires entry to that field. Any psychologist who manipulates an independent variable that affects a psychological construct or who uses a numerical dependent variable to measure a psychological construct will want to study this book. - Written by leading researchers in fields of measurement, psychophysical scaling, multidimensional scaling, stimulus categorization, and behavioral decision making - Provides basic definitions and summaries of theories - Presents summaries and citations to relevant literature - Contains new developments, current controversies, and open questions - Explains relationships among fields and historical links

Originally published in 1975, this title presented current theories in information processing and cognition at the time. The topics fall into three major groups. The first section is concerned with the issues of perception and initial processing of visual material; the second section is addressed to problem of storage, retrieval, and consciousness in memory; the final section is related to the processing of language.

The publication in 1957 of S.S. Stevens' famous paper, On the psychophysical law, ignited a controversy which has continued ever since relating to people's subjective judgements of physical reality. Why is it that the perception of sensation can diverge so sharply from the magnitude of the stimulus? How should sensation be measured? Donald Laming brings together a diversity of ideas and a wealth of experimental evidence, and provides a challenging new perspective on the question which has fragmented the research community for nearly 40 years.