Experienced subjects participate in some psychophysical research. While they may be more responsive to experimental stimuli than naive subjects, they may not be immune from stimulus error, the tendency for subjects to bias their responses given known physical characteristics of the stimulus. A brief examination of the literature concerning processing of changing sound-level and visual spatial frequency may support this contention.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AdairJ. G.The human subject. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1973.
2.
ArlingerS. D.JerlvallL. B.Results of psychoacoustic and cortical evoked potential experiments using frequency and amplitude modulated stimuli. Scandinavian Audiology, 1979, Supplement 9, 229–239.
3.
BarberT. X.Pitfalls in human research. New York: Pergamon, 1976.
4.
BlakemoreC.CampbellF. W.On the existence of neurones in the human visual system selectively sensitive to the orientation and size of retinal images. Journal of Physiology, London, 1969, 203, 237–260.
5.
BoringE. G.A history of experimental psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1950.
EngenT.PfaffmanC.Absolute judgements of odor intensity. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1959, 58, 23–26.
8.
GibsonE. J.BergmanR.PurdyJ.The effect of prior training with a scale of distance on absolute and relative judgements of distance over ground. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1955, 50, 97–105.
9.
NachmiasJ.SansburyR.VassilevA.WeberA.Adaptation to square-wave gratings: In search of the elusive third harmonic. Vision Research, 1973, 13, 1335–1342.
10.
Rawdon-SmithA. F.GrindleyG. C.An illusion in the perception of loudness. British Journal of Psychology, 1935, 26, 191–195.
11.
Reinhardt-RutlandA. H.Two auditory aftereffects and their dependence on carrier frequency. Perception and Psychophysics, 1980, 28, 569–571.
12.
Reinhardt-RutlandA. H.AnstisS. M.Auditory adaptation to gradual rise or fall in intensity of a tone. Perception and Psychophysics, 1982, 31, 63–67.
13.
SilvermanI.The human subject in the psychological laboratory. New York: Pergamon, 1977.
14.
SmallA. M.Loudness perception of signals of monotonically changing sound level. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 1977, 61, 1293–1297.
15.
TansleyB. W.ReganD.Separate auditory channels for unidirectional frequency modulation and unidirectional amplitude modulation. Sensory Processes, 1979, 3, 132–140.
16.
TitchenerE. B.Experimental psychology. New York: Macmillan, 1901–1905.