by R A M Gregson (Australian Nat'l Univ.)

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.

• Fundamental Assumptions of Nonlinear Psychophysical Dynamics
• Nonlinear Psychophysics, Response Surface Identification, and Cross-Entropy
• Properties of Nonlinear Dynamics Underlying the Generation of Cascades and Fields
• Cascades and the Case of Perceived Time Estimation
• Effects of Phase Space Changes and Noise in Fields
• More Fields Generated from Lattices in (n x n)Γ, and the Psychology of Some Illusions
• Other Field and Cascade Representations: Isosimilarities and Instabilities
• Postscript: Psychophysics or Events in the Real Brain?