Why the "stimulus-error" did not go away.
Studies in history and philosophy of science April 1, 2016 M Chirimuuta 8 citations
In early psychology, the 'stimulus-error' was a problem in introspective experiments where subjects reported what they knew about a stimulus rather than their raw perceptual experience. E. B. Titchener and E. G. Boring saw it as a serious methodological pitfall. Although their theoretical views fell out of favor with behaviorism, the issue persists in psychophysics: subjects give different perceptual reports to the same stimulus. Contemporary work on color and lightness constancy still grapples with controlling for variable reports and disputes over legitimate report types. Concern over the stimulus-error reveals psychologists' deep commitments about sensation and the perception-cognition boundary, with relevance to current philosophy of perception.