Department of Experimental Psychology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706, Electronic mail:
Behav Brain Sci. 1992 Sep;15(3):543-58. doi: 10.1017/S0140525X00069934.
Psychophysical scaling models of the form R = f(I), with R the response and I some intensity of an attribute, all assume that people judge the amounts of an attribute. With simple biases excepted, most also assume that judgments are independent of space, time, and features of the situation other than the one being judged. Many data support these ideas: Magnitude estimations of brightness (R) increase with luminance (I). Nevertheless, I argue that the general model is wrong. The stabilized retinal image literature shows that nothing is seen if light does not change over time. The classification literature shows that dimensions often combine to produce emergent properties that cannot be described by the elements in the stimulus. These and other effects cannot be adjusted for by simply adding variables to the general model because some factors do not combine linearly. The proposed alternative is that people initially judge the entire stimulus - the object in terms of its environment. This agrees with the constancy literature that shows that objects and their attributes are identified through their relations to other aspects of the scene. That the environment determines judgments is masked in scaling studies where the standard procedure is to hold context constant. In a typical brightness study (where different lights are presented on the same background on different trials) the essential stimulus might be the intensity of the light or a difference between the light and the background. The two are perfectly confounded. This issue is examined in the case of audition. Judgments of the loudness of a tone depend on how much that tone differs from the previous tone in both pitch and loudness. To judge loudness (and other attributes) people first seem to process the stimulus object in terms of differences between it and other aspects in the situation; only then do they assess the feature of interest. Psychophysical judgments will therefore be better interpreted by theories of attention that are based in biology or psychology than those (following Fechner) that are based in classical physics.
心理物理学比例模型的形式为 R = f（I），其中 R 是反应，I 是某种属性的强度，这些模型都假设人们在判断属性的数量。除了简单的偏差之外，大多数模型还假设判断是独立于空间、时间以及被判断的情况之外的其他特征的。许多数据支持这些观点：亮度（R）的主观估计值随着亮度（I）的增加而增加。然而，我认为一般模型是错误的。稳定的视网膜图像文献表明，如果光没有随时间变化，就什么也看不见。分类文献表明，维度通常组合起来产生不能用刺激中的元素来描述的突现属性。这些和其他效应不能通过简单地向一般模型添加变量来调整，因为有些因素不能线性组合。所提出的替代方案是，人们最初判断整个刺激——根据其与环境的关系来判断对象。这与恒常性文献一致，该文献表明，通过对象与其场景其他方面的关系来识别对象及其属性。环境决定判断的说法在比例研究中被掩盖了，在比例研究中，标准程序是保持上下文不变。在典型的亮度研究中（在不同的试验中，不同的光在相同的背景上呈现），基本的刺激可能是光的强度或光与背景之间的差异。两者完全混淆了。在听觉的情况下，这个问题得到了检查。音调的响度判断取决于该音调与前一音调在音调和响度上的差异。为了判断响度（和其他属性），人们首先似乎根据它与情况中其他方面的差异来处理刺激对象；只有在那时，他们才评估感兴趣的特征。基于生物学或心理学的注意力理论比基于经典物理学的理论（如费希纳）更能解释心理物理判断。
