Method of adjustment

Assessment | Biopsychology | Comparative | Cognitive | Developmental | Language | Individual differences | Personality | Philosophy | Social |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |

Cognitive Psychology: Attention · Decision making · Learning · Judgement · Memory · Motivation · Perception · Reasoning · Thinking  - Cognitive processes Cognition - Outline Index

---

The method of adjustment(also known as the method of average error or method of reproduction or equation method) was one of three psychophysical methods for studying sensory absolute and differential thresholds developed by Gustav Fechner. See method of limits and method of constant stimuli for the other methods

The absolute threshold of a modality is examined by allowing the subject, in a series of trials, to directly adjust the stimulus in order to find the weakest stimuli detectable by them. The threshold is determined as the value that was detected 50% of the time.

A differential threshold is similarly explored allowing the subject, in a series of trials, to directly adjust the stimulus relative to a comparison stimulus until they can detect a difference. The threshold is determined to be the point at which the subject notes a just noticeable difference from the comparison stimulus on 50% of the trials

See also

• Limen
• Signal detection theory
• Psychometric function

Additional material

Papers

• Google Scholar