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Relational Psychophysics in Humans and Animals

A Comparative-Developmental Approach

  • Price: $85.00 $76.50
  • Hardback: 176 pages
  • Also available in e-Book
  • Published: May 2006
  • ISBN: 978-1-84169-569-3
  • Publisher: Psychology Press

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Relational Psychophysics in Humans and Animals offers a comprehensive and integrated overview of the often fragmented field of psychophysics. It introduces key concepts in psychophysics and clearly summarises and illustrates the central issues through telling examples. It combines empirical research and theoretical approaches from general psychophysics, animal psychophysics and human-infant psychophysics, to create a systematic comparison of these three key areas.

Through out, Viktor Sarris makes a strong case for more comparative psychophysical research across different species and across different stages of development. He presents original research and examines frame-of-reference models, behavioural psychophysics, developmental psychophysics, perceptual-cognitive psychophysics and evolutionary perspectives, to create an integrated framework for the direction of new research.

The book will be an invaluable aid for researchers in the fields of perception and psychophysics.

Table of Contents

Preface. Introduction: Purpose and Scope. Relational Perception and Epistemology. Frame-of-reference Models in Psychophysics. Behavioural Psychophysics: Contrasting Ideas and Findings. Developmental Psychophysics. New Perspectives in Perceptual-cognitive Psychophysics. General Discussion and Conclusions. References. Appendix 1: Apparatus for Animal Psychophysics. Appendix 2: Mathematics of Transposition and Psychophysics. Appendix 3: An Engine Model of Relational Psychophysics.

Reviews

"Sarris has introduced some much-needed structure into the field of relational psychophysics. Particularly compelling is the use of the comparative, developmental, and evolutionary perspectives to enrich our ideas about context effects in human psychophysics. But Sarris doesn't stop there. He integrates ideas from philosophy, systems theory, physics, biology, and others, all in the context of laboratory work which illustrates fundamental ideas of how most living creatures perceive sensory stimuli in relation to each other and to their environmental setting." - Lawrence Ward, Department of Psychology and The Brain Research Centre, University of British Columbia

"Experts in the field can relyon this work as a compendium of data and heory that is currently lacking in the field. The integration of data, theory and mathematics is well done. I believe that anyone interested in general experimental psychology will appreciate this text for its rigorous approach. Moreovr, anyone interested in getting an overview of current psychophysics will enjoy this brief and well-written text." - James J. Jakubow, Florida Atlantic University, in PsycCRITIQUES, January 2007.