Marks L E
John B. Pierce Laboratory, New Haven, CT 06519.
Percept Psychophys. 1991 Jan;49(1):31-7. doi: 10.3758/bf03211613.
In each of four experimental sessions, each of 16 subjects gave magnitude estimates of the taste intensities of NaCl and the loudness of noise on a single, common scale--the method of magnitude matching. In all sessions, the intensity levels of the noises were identical; but in two sessions, the concentrations of NaCl were low, and in two they were high. Cross-modality matches (magnitude matches) between NaCl and noise were derived from the judgments, revealing two main findings: First, given constant NaCl concentrations, individual subjects showed reliably different magnitude matches. Second, changing the NaCl concentrations (context) strongly affected the magnitude matches. These findings suggest that magnitude matching may be useful in assessing interindividual as well as intergroup differences, though caution must be taken to minimize effects of context: Context effects are pervasive; they suggest the presence of a complex relativistic process operating when people judge the intensities of qualitatively different stimuli.
在四个实验环节中的每一个环节，16名受试者中的每一位都在单一的通用量表上对氯化钠的味道强度和噪音的响度进行了量级估计——量级匹配法。在所有环节中，噪音的强度水平是相同的；但在两个环节中，氯化钠的浓度较低，而在另外两个环节中，浓度较高。从这些判断中得出了氯化钠与噪音之间的跨模态匹配（量级匹配），揭示了两个主要发现：第一，在氯化钠浓度恒定的情况下，个体受试者表现出可靠的不同量级匹配。第二，改变氯化钠浓度（背景）强烈影响量级匹配。这些发现表明，量级匹配在评估个体间以及群体间差异方面可能是有用的，不过必须谨慎行事以尽量减少背景的影响：背景效应无处不在；它们表明当人们判断性质不同的刺激的强度时，存在一个复杂的相对论过程。
