Modern Psychophysical and Scaling Methods and Experimentation

This book, Modern Psychophysical and Scaling Methods and Experimentation consists of very essential subject matter for the students of psychology at the Post-Graduate and Research levels. Psychophysical and scaling methods are basic for any psychological measurement, without which there is no psychological measurement of any type. Scientists for a very long time were perplexing over the mind-body problem. At last Fechner found out a solution after working for more than ten years. Fechner's hypothesis was, that if mind is to be studied then physical energy that causes change in the mental energy must be studied. His important discovery was that there is corresponding relationship between physical energy and mental energy. Any physical energy in the form stimulation may cause a corresponding change in the mental energy in the form of response. Fechner said that this applies to all sensory experiences. Hence, Instruments for the study of sensory responses, reaction time, visual perception, judgements of mental abilities were invented and test materials of various types were designed and validated. All these have enriched the field of psychophysics and modern psychophysical and scaling methods were developed. Psycho-materians like Stevens and others applied the basic theory in all their studies and brought out enormous amount of materials. Thus, Psychophysics developed very rapidly.

About the Author :
Dr M. Rajamanickam has made many contributions to the field of psychology both in English and Tamil. Some of them were used as Text-Books. He was the first to obtain the Doctorate Degree of the Annamalai University in Psychology. He taught psychometry to the Post-Graduate students for more than two decades and the experience he had gained inspired him to write this book. Generally, to the students of psychology, psychometry is a nightmare. But this author has simplified all the intricacies of the field and made the students to like the subject. He has published quite number of papers in foreign and in Indian Journals. With his knowledge in psychometry, he has designed and developed about thirteen test materials. His important publications are. Contemporary Fields of Psychology and Experiments; Statistical Methods in Psychological and Educational Research; Modern Psycho-Physical and Scaling Methods and Experimentation; Modern General Psychology; and Advanced Experiments in Psychology, in two volumes, (yet to be published). There are also a number of books in Tamil on Psychological themes. He is very much interested in guiding research, and produced twelve Ph.D., arid about 40 M.Phil. Degrees. He started the Community Guidance Service Centre in 1980 in the Department to extend the Psychological Services to the rural people also founded the Journal Journal of Community Guidance and Research in 1984, of which he is Editor and it is run for the past 18 years without any break or delay.