Psychophysics

Psychophysics is the premier research tool for studying the relationship between the physical world and its sensory representations. The first section of the article delineates the typical components of a psychophysical experiment. The second section describes the different ways in which psychophysical experiments can be classified: Class A versus Class B; Type 1 versus Type 2; performance versus appearance; forced‐choice versus non-forced‐choice; criterion‐dependent versus criterion‐free; detection versus discrimination; and threshold versus suprathreshold. The final section outlines the principal varieties of psychophysical procedure.