Ellermeier W, Westphal W, Heidenfelder M
Physiologisches Institut der Universität Würzburg, Germany.
Percept Psychophys. 1991 Feb;49(2):159-66. doi: 10.3758/bf03205035.
The concept of "absolute scaling" (Zwislocki & Goodman, 1980) implies that direct judgments of sensory magnitude not only reflect the relative positions of the stimuli being judged, but also permit us to assess level differences in sensation. In order to explore this notion for different scaling methods, in the present investigation we compared magnitude estimation with category partitioning, a verbally anchored categorization procedure, in scaling painful pressure stimuli covering different intensity ranges. The results indicate that when the same stimulus range was presented after 1 week, both methods appeared to be highly reliable, with category partitioning faring somewhat better than magnitude estimation. When the stimulus range was unobtrusively changed between sessions, both methods reflected the within-subjects shift in absolute level. When two different sets of subjects judged the slightly different stimulus ranges, both methods resulted in scale values consistent with absolute scaling, though only category partitioning was sensitive enough to differentiate the two stimulus ranges. The results are discussed in the context of different possibilities of anchoring direct scaling methods in order to obtain "absolute" level information.
“绝对标度”的概念（兹维兹洛茨基和古德曼，1980年）意味着对感觉量值的直接判断不仅反映了被判断刺激的相对位置，还使我们能够评估感觉中的水平差异。为了针对不同的标度方法探究这一概念，在本研究中，我们将量级估计与类别划分（一种语言锚定的分类程序）进行了比较，以对覆盖不同强度范围的疼痛压力刺激进行标度。结果表明，当在1周后呈现相同的刺激范围时，两种方法似乎都具有高度可靠性，类别划分的表现略优于量级估计。当在各次实验之间不显眼地改变刺激范围时，两种方法都反映了受试者内部绝对水平的变化。当两组不同的受试者判断略有不同的刺激范围时，两种方法得出的标度值都与绝对标度一致，不过只有类别划分足够灵敏，能够区分这两个刺激范围。我们在将直接标度方法进行锚定以获取“绝对”水平信息的不同可能性的背景下讨论了这些结果。
