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Intensity Judgments and Physiological Response Amplitude
Author(s) -
Bull Kenneth,
Lang Peter J.
Publication year - 1972
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1972.tb01790.x
Subject(s) - stimulus (psychology) , psychology , audiology , intensity (physics) , communication , cognitive psychology , optics , physics , medicine
Heart rate and cortical evoked responses to 5 sound intensities were examined in 7 subjects, who were instructed to judge the intensity rank of each stimulus. The cortical potential exhibited a predominantly linear relationship to intensity, with larger responses evoked by the louder tones. However, heart rate showed both a significant linear and a significant quadratic relationship. The latter tendency, for larger responses to occur for high and low tones, increased progressively over trial series. These results were paralleled by a quadratic relationship between stimulus intensity and judgment errors and between intensity and reaction time to stimulus offset (fewer errors and shorter latencies for high and low “anchor” tones). These findings show that both physical intensity and the subject's ability to discriminate stimuli modulate the amplitude of some physiological responses, and the latter factor increases in influence as the subject becomes more familiar with the stimulus set.