Wade N J, Heller D
Department of Psychology, University of Dundee, Scotland.
Psychol Res. 1997;60(4):227-37. doi: 10.1007/BF00419407.
Discussions of space and time have been grist to the philosophers' mill for centuries. We argue that the evolution of psychology as an independent discipline was in part a consequence of addressing philosophical questions concerning the perception of space and time by recourse to experiment rather than exposition. Two initially separate factors assisted in establishing this independence. On the one hand, it was driven by the invention of instruments for stimulus control so that the methods of physics could be applied to the study of perceptual phenomena. On the other hand and somewhat later, it was followed by the development of psychophysical methods, which opened the possibility of quantifying the responses to such controlled stimulation. The principal instruments were invented in the first half of the nineteenth century, and they consisted of simple contrivances that manipulated time and space in ways that had not previously been appreciated. This article examines the devices that were invented, like stroboscopes, anorthoscopes, stereoscopes, tachistoscopes, chronoscopes, and more recently oscilloscopes, and the ways in which they influenced the scope of perceptual psychology in the past as well as in the present. In contemporary experimental psychology all these instruments have been replaced by the computer. While it has extended the scope of experiments even further it has introduced a new set of limitations.
几个世纪以来，关于空间和时间的讨论一直是哲学家们津津乐道的话题。我们认为，心理学作为一门独立学科的发展，部分是由于通过实验而非阐述来解决有关空间和时间感知的哲学问题的结果。两个最初相互独立的因素促成了这种独立性。一方面，它是由用于刺激控制的仪器的发明所推动的，这样物理学方法就可以应用于感知现象的研究。另一方面，稍晚一些时候，心理物理学方法的发展随之而来，这使得对这种受控刺激的反应进行量化成为可能。主要仪器发明于19世纪上半叶，它们由一些简单的装置组成，这些装置以以前未被认识到的方式操纵时间和空间。本文考察了诸如频闪观测器、屈光矫正器、立体镜、速示器、记时器以及最近的示波器等发明的仪器，以及它们在过去和现在对感知心理学范围的影响方式。在当代实验心理学中，所有这些仪器都已被计算机所取代。虽然它进一步扩展了实验范围，但也引入了一系列新的局限性。
