The Psychophysics of Sensory Function

Abstract This chapter discusses the comeback staged by psychophysics that started in the 1930s. Since then, new interest in the age-old problem of sensory response has been kindled by the invention of procedures for assessing the overall input-output operating characteristics of the intact sensory system. These methods show that sensory response grows according to a power law. It is shown here how a simple relation can be shown to hold under many diverse kinds of stimulation, so much so, that the widespread invariance of the power law becomes a matter of large significance. In this chapter, psychophysics is defined as a discipline concerned with the responses that organisms make to the energies of the environment. An orderly and systematic account of sensory communication must include a delineation of what is perceived as well as an explanation of how perception is accomplished, and it is in this sense that psychophysics defines the challenge.