Tests of the psychological meaning of the power law

The purpose of this study was to establish a theoretical framework for Stevens' empirically derived power law. Three models were proposed to explain the power law. They respectively outline how sensory, stimulus, and response variables determine the judgmental behavior in a psychophysical task. A correlational study on individual differences in exponents was carried out to test the predictions derived from each model. The use of four different sensory continua and four scaling procedures provided the experimental means of manipulating the sensory, stimulus, and response variables in the scaling situation. The results showed that response variables are important determinants of judgmental behavior in psychophysical scaling. These findings suggest that subjects' responses to stimulus intensities in a scaling task are largely cognitive.