Comparison of two theories of "ratio" and "difference" judgments.

This article examines the hypothesis that judges compare stimuli by ratio and subtractive operations when instructed to judge" "ratios" and "differences." Rule and Curtis hold that magnitude estimations are a power function of subjective values, with an exponent between 1.1 and 2.1. Accordingly, the two-operation model tested assumes magnitude estimations of "ratios" are a comparable power function of subjective ratios. In contrast, Birnbaum and Veit theorize that judges compare two stimuli by subraction for both "ratio" and "difference" instructions and that magnitude estimations of "ratios" are approximately an exponential function of subjective differences. Three tests were used to compare the theory of one operation with the two-operation theory for the data of nine experiments. The results strongly favor the theory that observers use the same operation for both instructions.