John Miyamoto: Invariance-of-unit hypotheses in judgment modeling

Abstract

An invariance-of-unit hypothesis is a hypothesis that equal spacing of psychological units is preserved across transformations of a stimulus. It will be shown that many cognitive models imply invariance-of-unit hypotheses. For example, additive utility models imply an invariance-of-unit hypothesis. The power law for subjective ratio judgments implies an invariance-of-unit hypothesis. After explaining the concept of an invariance-of-unit hypothesis, I will show that these hypotheses can be tested very simply in experimental data.