On Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:09:39 -0700, Michael Sylvester wrote: >It was,I think,SS Stevens and his psychophysics stuff who might >have introduced the notion of absolute threshold and just noticeable >differences in the field
Wow! Not even close. I'll leave it to Chris Green or an S&P person (do psychophysicists even exist anymore?) to really hammer you on this but Ernst Weber introduced the notion of the JND in the form of the Weber ratio and Gustav Fechner used it as the basis for his logarithmic law. Wikipedia (standard disclaimers apply) has an entry on JND which provides some of the background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-noticeable_difference A more up to date treatment of the problems involved here are provided by Neil Macmillan and Douglas Creelman in their "Detection Theory" (the first edition is available on books.google.com at: http://books.google.com/books?id=Pfw3AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25&dq=fechner+%22just+noticeable+difference%22+threshold&source=bl&ots=w8vdK0u6PF&sig=R8tBx7-C6pybzCOssAEF5JByvfo&hl=en&ei=ktfASt2MBNDRlAfKt-iwBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10#v=onepage&q=fechner%20%22just%20noticeable%20difference%22%20threshold&f=false or http://tinyurl.com/ydxsasg ) or George Gescheider's "Psychophysics: The Fundametnals", the 3rd edition is available in limited preview on books.google.com: http://books.google.com/books?id=gAFtxKQI1mAC&pg=PP1&dq=psychophysics#v=onepage&q=&f=false or http://tinyurl.com/ybceyj6 >and I find myself trying to see how those constructs could be applied to >interpreters at the United Nations.My observation is that women interpreters >seem to provide a more understandable English translations than men >interpreters. I suspect that may be related to the contrasting differences >within the linguistic paradigm of tonal delivery.Men interpreters translating >to English appear to parallel the same level tone as say the Arabic speaker. >Comments invited. Is this anecdotal or can you provide a reference? -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
