Evaluating a Model of Global Psychophysical Judgments: II. Behavioral Properties Linking Summations and Productions

Steingrimsson and Luce (2003a) outlined the second author’s proposed psychophysical theory (Luce, 2002, 2003a,b) and tested behavioral attributes that, separately, gave rise to one psychophysical function, Ψ, that maps pairs of physical intensities onto the positive real numbers that represents subjective summation and a second one, Ψ∗,that represents a form of ratio production. This article takes up properties linking summation and production in such a way as to force Ψ∗ = Ψ. The properties are evaluated in a series of experiments. The testing strategy is carried out in the auditory domain and concerns the subjective perception of loudness. Considerable support is provided for theoretical forms of Ψ for both summations and ratio productions. 1This article is based, in part, on the first author’s Ph. D. dissertation (Steingrimsson, 2002).