Stimulus-response with reciprocal kernels: The rise and fall of sensation

Abstract The paper presents a theory for constructing response scales based on the reciprocal property of paired comparisons of stimuli from the same sensory continuum. Reciprocal paired comparisons define the pair estimator function K ( s , t ), the kernel of a Fredholm integral equation of the second kind. The solution of this equation yields a response scale of the form s α e − βs , where s is the stimulus scale. The response scale provides a basis for a theory to describe how images and sensation patterns are formed from stimuli.