ABSTRACT
Following the publication of E. B. Titchener’s book, new methods were added to psychophysicist’s toolbox, notably a short-lived “method of simple stimuli” that paved the way for the method of magnitude estimation in S. S. Stevens’s theory of psychophysics. According to Stephen Link, the psychometric function was introduced into psychophysics, at a rather late date, by F. M. Urban. After an introduction to some of psychophysical methods he discussed, the special case of the method of right and wrong cases was addressed. The relationship between the normal probability density function, the cumulative normal probability function, and the psychometric function is less straightforward than it might seem. Turning to psychophysics, J. M. Cattell reported simple response times in experiments in which the participant responded, as soon as possible, to the onset of a visual stimulus varying in intensity. Response times can be divided into “simple” and “choice.” F. C. Donders, a Dutch ophthalmologist, invented a mechanical device for measuring response times.
