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Psychophysical scaling methods reveal and measure context effects

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Commentary on LockheadGregory R. (1992) Psychophysical scaling: Judgments of attributes or objects? BBS 15:543–601.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Gregory R. Lockhead
Gregory R. Lockhead*
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27706. greg@psych.duke.edu
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Abstract

People cannot make independent judgements of stimulus attributes and so “it is necessary to theorize in terms of stimulus structures” (Lockhead 1992, p. 551) rather than in terms of stimulus features. The new commentaries here further this statement and also support the observations in the target article that psychophysical scaling methods allow us to measure (1) how context determines judgments and (2) what people remember about prior stimuli.

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