The International Society for Psychophysics

Imagine Gene Galanter in military uniform atop a hill. He is looking at the vast expanse of human behavior unfolding below him. The behaviors range from gallantry, Eugene himself received the French Legion d’Honeur, to self preservation. Perhaps his WWII experiences shaped the keen perception of human behavior he used to stimulate and drive forward a new view, a new force, in Psychology.

The force was Gene’s positive approach to creating and then extending a more theoretical psychology. The behaviorists, such as Skinner and other S-R theorists, believed that only known behaviors were needed in order to predict future behaviors. But, following WWII many new psychologists saw the need for a deeper understanding of the cause of behavior. In this view, learning was fundamental. But, then, given learning, how does behavior occur? The remarkable book by Galanter, Miller, and Pribram, (1960), Plans and the structure of behavior, suggested a means by which behaviors developed. The book marks a fundamental turning point in the development of psychological theory – a step beyond the Gestalt psychologists and their predecessors.

Mental processes became important. The process describing the path from stimulus to response required advanced mathematical theories, based on axiomatic foundations, probability models and stochastic processes to create a better understanding of the actions of mind.

Graduate training at Stanford’s Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences required study of three volumes edited by Luce, Bush & Galanter, the Handbook of mathematical psychology. In addition, Galanter, Luce, and Bush’s (1964–1965) Readings in mathematical psychology (3 volumes) introduced many students to the most fundamental ideas and new developments. I was especially intrigued by Luce and Galanter’s approach to choice, and especially appreciative of the great chapters contributed to and edited by Galanter, Luce and Bush.

Many, many years later I met Gene during meetings of the International Society for Psychophysics. His presentations suggested how psychophysical theory can be applied to the various educational interests he maintained since the publication of his first book, Automatic teaching: the state of the art (1959). He knew the drill and discovered a kindred group of scientists who appreciated the formal theory and developments he fostered. He was a lively speaker, always up front and at the top. I think of how his works deepened my own education at Stanford and how his intellect, foresight and rigor advantaged us all.

Thank you Gene, for great accomplishments.

Stephen Link

Professor Emeritus

Ragnar Steingrimsson, UCI IMBS associate project scientist, dies at 50

Ragnar Steingrimsson, associate project scientist in the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at University of California at Irvine, passed away in his sleep on May 22. He was 50.

Steingrimsson received his Ph.D. in cognitive sciences from UCI in 2002 and went on to complete postdoctoral work on the Irvine campus and at New York University before starting work full time at UCI’s Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences as an assistant project scientist. Alongside renowned cognitive scientists Duncan Luce and Louis Narens, Steingrimsson pursued research on subjective evaluation of sensory intensities – how people understand loudness, brightness, pain and other senses. At the time of his death, he was working to provide scientific evidence for a comprehensive theory of Luce’s that explained and integrated judgments of intensity within and across sensory domains. 

“As a graduate student in cognitive sciences, Ragnar did his doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Duncan,” says Louis Narens, cognitive sciences professor. “Duncan developed new mathematical techniques to study how people understand and experience senses – and Ragnar developed experimental techniques to test Duncan’s theories. Together, they published many papers in top psychology journals and developed important new methodologies for conducting psychophysical research.”

Among them: Psychological Review, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Journal of American Psychology, and Attention, Perception & Psychophysics.

Steingrimsson also studied under cognitive sciences professors David Laberge and Jean-Claude Falmagne where he focused on attention and psychophysics and knowledge spaces, respectively. Throughout his postdoctoral positions at UCI, his research was continuously funded by the National Science Foundation and Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Steingrimsson was an avid runner and a native of Iceland. He earned a certificate in French language at the University of Paris, Sorbonne in 1989, and then headed to the University of Copenhagen, Denmark where he earned his bachelor’s in film and communication in 1991 and his bachelor’s in computer science in 1992. He came to Chapman University in Orange, California where he earned an MFA in 1994 and his master’s in English in 1995. He then joined the UCI Department of Cognitive Sciences graduate program, earning his master’s in 1998 and his Ph.D. in 2002.

During his 22-year association with UCI, Steingrimsson also worked remotely as a senior research scientist for the Northwest Evaluation Association (2013-16), an adjunct professor of psychology for New York University (2004-05), and a research scientist at Ohio State University (2017).

Text provided by Kimberly A. Jameson

Åke Hellström

Stockholm University, Sweden

Our very distinguished member, Professor Hannes Eisler, Stockholm University, has left us. He died on May 28, 2015, at the age of 91. He was a member of the ISP from its beginnings. At Fechner Day 2014 in Lund, Sweden, Hannes lectured on “Some research tips from 55 years’ psychophysics.” Informally, he named this presentation his “swan song.”

Hannes was Born in Vienna, Austria, 1923, and at the age of 15 fled to Sweden to escape the Nazis. Initially Hannes worked as a farm hand but quickly progressed to study at high school and later at Stockholm University, where he became an adept of Gösta Ekman, the Swedish pioneer of quantitative psychology. After spending a year in S. S. Stevens’ lab at Harvard, Hannes was awarded his Ph.D. in Stockholm 1963. In 1994, as the result of a petition from all Swedish psychology professors, the Swedish government awarded Hannes Eisler the rank and honor of Professor – a rare recognition of scientific merit.

During his long career, Hannes authored a large number of publications and made many important contributions to our field. His doctoral dissertation was about the relation between magnitude and category scales. Later on, he turned much of his interest toward time perception in people as well as in mice. Perhaps the most impressive of his contributions is the Parallel Clock model for temporal reproduction and comparison¹, which arose from Hannes’ arduous and meticulous investigation of long known anomalies in time perception; specifically, breaks in psychophysical functions. Noting the positions of those breaks in reproduction data led him to the counter-intuitive realization that participants use a seemingly odd strategy in immediate reproduction of temporal intervals: subjectively matching the reproduction, not to the standard, but to one-half of the total duration. Using this model it is possible to estimate the psycho-physical function for time from reproduction data, and Hannes published a huge collection of temporal power function exponents² – much cited but all too often with no understanding of how they were determined.

Hannes was intellectually perspicacious and possessed research talent in abundance. Modes-ty, good nature, along with deep and diverse cultural interests, sense of humor, and appreci-ation of the good things in life, were some of his other characteristics. Scientific seminars on various topics were enriched by his insightful comments until a heart attack sadly ended his long life.

I miss Hannes immensely, as a very good old friend, a respected senior colleague, and a mentor – even the word guru feels very appropriate.

References

1. Eisler, H. (1975). Psychological Review, 82, 429-450.
2. Eisler, H. (1976). Psychological Bulletin, 83, 1154-1171.

Eugene Galanter
Columbia University

I met Bob Bush at Dartmouth at the Social Science Research Council Mathematics meeting, in the summer of 1953. I also met Fred Mosteller, Leon Festinger, and Paul Lazarsfeld there; a mighty triumverate. Bush, soon a close friend, introduced me to Duncan at a meeting in New York in 1954. Later, Bob and I worked on some experimental problems when I was at the Psychoacoustics Laboratory at Harvard from 1956-58. I stayed there for the 1956-57 term, but by then Bob had moved to the New York School of Social Work at Columbia University. Duncan was already at Columbia, and this was when we all began meeting together routinely. The general topic was choice behavior—learning, psychophysics, and preference.

During the middle of that year Duncan accepted a position at Harvard, which spread our trio out along the northeast coast. To continue our meetings as well as to run some experiments we were designing, we needed financial support. The three of us applied for and shortly received a grant in the sum of $10,000 from the American Philosophical Society. They sent a checkbook. When we had spent all the funds they simply asked us to return the check stubs. Hi-ho a simpler life.

At least one of those meetings had interesting consequences. A train trip to Boston on Thanksgiving weekend gave Bob and me time to discuss the problem Penn’s Department of Psychology was having finding a new chairman. Penn was beginning to shift from its postwar concentration on training clinical psychologists towards a commitment to a strong experimental program in several fields of psychology. By the time Bob and I arrived at Duncan’s Cambridge apartment, we had hatched the idea of proposing Bob’s name as chairman. Among its advantages would be the establishment of an Eastern haven where mathematical psychology could be fostered. The idea appealed to us, but the political realities were formidable. Just how realistic was it for an assistant professor (me) to propose as chairman of one of the oldest departments of psychology in the United States, a recently converted physicist who was then an applied mathematician in a School of Social Work, especially when one of his first proposed appointments would be Duncan, an MIT graduate with a degree in aeronautical engineering.

During the first two years of Bob’s chairmanship at Penn, the academic year ended with two months of close collaboration when Duncan, Bob, and I rented a house in Pigeon Cove, near Rockport, MA. We were joined there for part of the time by Fred Mosteller. While there work was completed on four papers—one by Bush and Estes’ (1959); one by Bush, Galanter, & Luce (1959); one by Bush & Mosteller (1959); and Galanter & Bush (1959), That fall Duncan joined the Penn faculty and further travel became unnecessary. The three of us became so close that we were like family in our thinking and planning.

Ultimately when all three of us settled in Philadelphia, we bought houses near each other. We socialized together, made decisions about the development of the department, and even though Bob was the Chairman, decisions were made by the three of us. At Penn, we began working on the Handbook of Mathematical Psychology and the Readings in Mathematical Psychology.

During a year at the Stanford Center, I took flying lessons, and became so centered on flying that I bought my first airplane. Duncan often went flying with me. We traveled together to various meetings in America (by plane) and Europe, but always returned to Penn, until I received an invitation from the University of Washington. I was asked to come there to be Chairman and hopefully to perform the same transformation there, that we had put together at Penn.

I visited Seattle in the spring of 1962, and arrived for the fall term. That Christmas Patricia and I were married. We bought a 55 foot yacht, the Gloria, and after unhappy residential efforts, decided to put our furniture in storage and live aboard. On Duncan’s frequent visits, he used his U.S. Navy seamanship handling the lines, steering the Gloria, etc. On one of our cruises on Lake Washington, he took the dinghy for a bit of rowing taking other guests including Richard Rose and Don Norman. We always had a good crowd on those cruises. We would often go through the locks to Puget Sound and then up to Victoria, Canada, docking at the Empress Hotel. Bob and Duncan took that Canadian trip several times.

At that time I was called to various NSF site visit committees, so Patricia and I would often be on the east coast. We always took time to visit Philadelphia, and would stay in Duncan’s house, which was much like the house that I had owned when I was in Philadelphia. Duncan was always a gracious host—always concerned that we were comfortable. On a later visit, Duncan had moved to a larger house. It was quite elaborate with a bathtub that was almost as large as a swimming pool. Here I saw how community-minded Duncan was, for he always had a basket of oranges outside the gate for neighborhood children.

Around this time Duncan decided to take flying lessons, and ultimately bought a Cessna 172. In December 1965 on a visit all over the east coast, Duncan told us about what had happened on November 9,1965. He had taken off from LaGuardia at 5:20 p.m. and looking back only saw black. Not a single light anywhere. It was the night the whole New York area had a massive “black out.” Fortunately Philadelphia had not lost power, so he landed safely. I don’t think he continued flying much after that, as I don’t recall him discussing planes anymore.

In 1966 Patricia and I decided to leave Seattle. We arrived in New York on Labor Day weekend and spent the year at Columbia. We decided to stay at Columbia. Duncan decided to go to the Princeton Institute, and continued to visit often in New York. However, one fateful day, he visited and told us he was accepting a position at Harvard. He seldom traveled down to New York anymore, and we were spending more time in Europe by then. But, we did get together at a meeting in Syracuse in 1989 to discuss Stevens’s impact on psychology. Duncan told us that he had met someone very special, and that they were planning to be married. He and Carolyn Scheer were married, and subsequently moved to UC Irvine where Duncan spent the rest of his academic life.

I have been visiting with him at Irvine for the past few years. We had planned to do some experiments together this spring. He was one of my oldest and dearest friends, and I miss him.

12/11/2014