Robert A. M. Gregson

Originally published in 1992, this work compliments and extends the theory and results of nonlinear psychophysics – an original approach created by the author. It breaks with the traditional mathematics used in the experimental psychology of sensation and draws on what is popularly known as chaos theory and its extension into neural networks. Topical and innovative in its approach, it integrates a diversity of topics previously treated separately into one framework. The properties of the mathematics used are illustrated in the context of substantive problems in psychophysics; thus, it builds strong new bridges between the dynamics of mass action in psychophysical processes and the broader phenomena of sensation. No other treatments of the topic take quite this approach; the use of systems theory, rather than traditional equations of psychophysics dating from the mid-nineteenth century, offers a striking contrast in both theory construction and data analysis.

Originally published in 1992, this work compliments and extends the theory and results of nonlinear psychophysics – an original approach created by the author. It breaks with the traditional mathematics used in the experimental psychology of sensation and draws on what is popularly known as chaos theory and its extension into neural networks. Topical and innovative in its approach, it integrates a diversity of topics previously treated separately into one framework. The properties of the mathematics used are illustrated in the context of substantive problems in psychophysics; thus, it builds strong new bridges between the dynamics of mass action in psychophysical processes and the broader phenomena of sensation. No other treatments of the topic take quite this approach; the use of systems theory, rather than traditional equations of psychophysics dating from the mid-nineteenth century, offers a striking contrast in both theory construction and data analysis.

Nonlinear Psychophysical Dynamics utilizes new results in systems theory as a foundation for representing sensory channels as a form of recursive loop processes. It demonstrates that a range of phenomena, previously treated as diverse or anomalous, are more readily seen as related and as the natural consequence of self-regulation and nonlinearity. Some cases with appropriate data analysis are reviewed.

Psychophysics is by definition mappings between events in the environment and levels of human sensory responses. In this text the methods of nonlinear dynamics, employing trajectories developed for simpler sensory modelling, are extended to classes of problems which lie at the interface between sensation and perception. A diversity of topics for which extensive empirical evidence exists are reformulated by writing their dynamics in terms of complex trajectories put into coupled lattices and into cascades of such lattices. Fundamental relationships between core processes of psychophysics in time and space, and recurrent quantitative or topological distortions of the physical world which arise in perception, are given a treatment which contrasts fundamentally with traditional linear equations in use since the 19th century.

Nonlinear Psychophysical Dynamics utilizes new results in systems theory as a foundation for representing sensory channels as a form of recursive loop processes. It demonstrates that a range of phenomena, previously treated as diverse or anomalous, are more readily seen as related and as the natural consequence of self-regulation and nonlinearity. Some cases with appropriate data analysis are reviewed.