Mathematical psychology

Mathematical psychology is an approach to psychological research that is based on mathematical

modeling of perceptual, thought, cognitive and motor processes, and on the establishment of law-like rules
that relate quantifiable stimulus characteristics with quantifiable behavior (in practice often constituted by
task performance). The mathematical approach is used with the goal of deriving hypotheses that are more
exact and thus yield stricter empirical validations. There are five major research areas in mathematical
psychology: learning and memory, perception and psychophysics, choice and decision-making, language
and thinking, and measurement and scaling.[1]

Although psychology, as an independent subject of science, is a more recent discipline than physics,[2] the
application of mathematics to psychology has been done in the hope of emulating the success of this
approach in the physical sciences, which dates back to at least the seventeenth century.[3] Mathematics in
psychology is used extensively roughly in two areas: one is the mathematical modeling of psychological
theories and experimental phenomena, which leads to mathematical psychology, the other is the statistical
approach of quantitative measurement practices in psychology, which leads to psychometrics.[2]

As quantification of behavior is fundamental in this endeavor, the theory of measurement is a central topic
in mathematical psychology. Mathematical psychology is therefore closely related to psychometrics.
However, where psychometrics is concerned with individual differences (or population structure) in mostly
static variables, mathematical psychology focuses on process models of perceptual, cognitive and motor
processes as inferred from the 'average individual'. Furthermore, where psychometrics investigates the
stochastic dependence structure between variables as observed in the population, mathematical psychology
almost exclusively focuses on the modeling of data obtained from experimental paradigms and is therefore
even more closely related to experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, and psychonomics. Like
computational neuroscience and econometrics, mathematical psychology theory often uses statistical
optimality as a guiding principle, assuming that the human brain has evolved to solve problems in an
optimized way. Central themes from cognitive psychology (e.g., limited vs. unlimited processing capacity,
serial vs. parallel processing) and their implications are central in rigorous analysis in mathematical
psychology.

Mathematical psychologists are active in many fields of psychology, especially in psychophysics, sensation
and perception, problem solving, decision-making, learning, memory, language, and the quantitative
analysis of behavior, and contribute to the work of other subareas of psychology such as clinical
psychology, social psychology, educational psychology, and psychology of music.

History

Mathematics and psychology before the 19th century

Choice and decision making theory are rooted in the development of probability theory. In the mid 1600s,
Blaise Pascal considered situations in gambling and further extended to Pascal's wager.[4] In the 18th
century, Nicolas Bernoulli proposed the St. Petersburg Paradox in decision making, Daniel Bernoulli gave
a solution and Laplace proposed a modification to the solution later on. In 1763, Bayes published the paper
"An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances", which is the milestone of Bayesian
statistics.
 Robert Hooke worked on modeling human memory, which is a precursor of
the study of memory.

Mathematics and psychology in the 19th century

The research developments in German and England in the 19th century made
psychology a new academic subject. Since German approach emphasized
experiments in the investigation of the psychological processes that all human
share and the England approach was the measurement of individual
differences, the applications of mathematics are also different.
Ernst Heinrich Weber
In German, Wilhelm Wundt established the first experimental psychology
laboratory. The math in German psychology is mainly applied in sensory and
psychophysics. Ernst Weber (1795–1878) created the first mathematical law of
the mind, Weber's law, based on a variety of experiments. Gustav Fechner
(1801–1887) contributed math theories in sensations and perceptions and one
of them is the Fechner's law, which modifies Weber's law.

Mathematical modeling has a long history in psychology starting in the 19th

century with Ernst Weber (1795–1878) and Gustav Fechner (1801–1887)
being among the first to apply successful mathematical technique of functional
equations from physics to psychological processes. They thereby established
the fields of experimental psychology in general, and that of psychophysics in
particular.
Gustav Fechner Researchers in astronomy in the 19th century were mapping distances between
stars by denoting the exact time of a star's passing of a cross-hair on a
telescope. For lack of the automatic registration instruments of the modern era,
these time measurements relied entirely on human response speed. It had been noted that there were small
systematic differences in the times measured by different astronomers, and these were first systematically
studied by German astronomer Friedrich Bessel (1782–1846). Bessel constructed personal equations from
measurements of basic response speed that would cancel out individual differences from the astronomical
calculations. Independently, physicist Hermann von Helmholtz measured reaction times to determine nerve
conduction speed, developed resonance theory of hearing and the Young-Helmholtz theory of color vision.

These two lines of work came together in the research of Dutch physiologist F. C. Donders and his student
J. J. de Jaager, who recognized the potential of reaction times for more or less objectively quantifying the
amount of time elementary mental operations required. Donders envisioned the employment of his mental
chronometry to scientifically infer the elements of complex cognitive activity by measurement of simple
reaction time[5]

Although there are developments in sensation and perception, Johann Herbart developed a system of
mathematical theories in cognitive area to understand the mental process of consciousness.

The origin of English psychology can be traced to the theory of evolution by Darwin. But the emergence of
English psychology is because of Francis Galton, who interested in individual differences between humans
on psychological variables. The math in English psychology is mainly statistics and the work and methods
of Galton is the foundation of psychometrics.

Galton introduced bivariate normal distribution in modeling the traits of the same individual, he also
investigated measurement error and built his own model, and he also developed a stochastic branching
process to examine the extinction of family names. There is also a tradition of the interest in studying
intelligence in English psychology started from Galton. James McKeen Cattell and Alfred Binet developed
tests of intelligence.

The first psychological laboratory was established in Germany by Wilhelm Wundt, who amply used
Donders' ideas. However, findings that came from the laboratory were hard to replicate and this was soon
attributed to the method of introspection that Wundt introduced. Some of the problems resulted from
individual differences in response speed found by astronomers. Although Wundt did not seem to take
interest in these individual variations and kept his focus on the study of the general human mind, Wundt's
U.S. student James McKeen Cattell was fascinated by these differences and started to work on them during
his stay in England.

The failure of Wundt's method of introspection led to the rise of different schools of thought. Wundt's
laboratory was directed towards conscious human experience, in line with the work of Fechner and Weber
on the intensity of stimuli. In the United Kingdom, under the influence of the anthropometric developments
led by Francis Galton, interest focussed on individual differences between humans on psychological
variables, in line with the work of Bessel. Cattell soon adopted the methods of Galton and helped laying the
foundation of psychometrics.

20th century

Many statistical methods were developed even before the 20th century: Charles Spearman invented factor
analysis which studies individual differences by the variance and covariance. German psychology and
English psychology have been combined and taken over by the United States. The statistical methods
dominated the field during the beginning of the century. There are two important statistical developments:
Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and analysis of variance (ANOVA). Since factor analysis unable to
make causal inferences, the method of structural equation modeling was developed by Sewall Wright to
correlational data to infer causality, which is still a major research area today. Those statistical methods
formed psychometrics. The Psychometric Society was established in 1935 and the journal Psychometrika
was published since 1936.

In the United States, behaviorism arose in opposition to introspectionism and associated reaction-time
research, and turned the focus of psychological research entirely to learning theory.[5] In Europe
introspection survived in Gestalt psychology. Behaviorism dominated American psychology until the end
of the Second World War, and largely refrained from inference on mental processes. Formal theories were
mostly absent (except for vision and hearing).

During the war, developments in engineering, mathematical logic and computability theory, computer
science and mathematics, and the military need to understand human performance and limitations, brought
together experimental psychologists, mathematicians, engineers, physicists, and economists. Out of this mix
of different disciplines mathematical psychology arose. Especially the developments in signal processing,
information theory, linear systems and filter theory, game theory, stochastic processes and mathematical
logic gained a large influence on psychological thinking.[5][6]

Two seminal papers on learning theory in Psychological Review helped to establish the field in a world that
was still dominated by behaviorists: A paper by Bush and Mosteller instigated the linear operator approach
to learning,[7] and a paper by Estes that started the stimulus sampling tradition in psychological
theorizing.[8] These two papers presented the first detailed formal accounts of data from learning
experiments.

Mathematical modeling of learning process were greatly developed in the 1950s as the behavioral learning
theory was flourishing. One development is the stimulus sampling theory by Williams K. Estes, the other is
linear operator models by Robert R. Bush, and Frederick Mosteller.
Signal processing and detection theory are broadly used in perception, psychophysics and nonsensory area
of cognition. Von Neumann's book The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior establish the importance
of game theory and decision making. R. Duncan Luce and Howard Raiffa contributed to the choice and
decision making area.

The area of language and thinking comes into the spotlight with the development of computer science and
linguistics, especially information theory and computation theory. Chomsky proposed the model of
linguistics and computational hierarchy theory. Allen Newell and Herbert Simon proposed the model of
human solving problems. The development in artificial intelligence and human computer interface are
active areas in both computer science and psychology.

Before the 1950s, psychometricians emphasized the structure of measurement error and the development of
high-power statistical methods to the measurement of psychological quantities but little of the psychometric
work concerned the structure of the psychological quantities being measured or the cognitive factors behind
the response data. Scott and Suppes studied relationship between the structure of data and the structure of
numerical systems that represent the data.[9] Coombs constructed formal cognitive models of the respondent
in a measurement situation rather than statistical data processing algorithms, for example the unfolding
model.[10][11] Another breakthrough is the development of a new form of the psychophysical scaling
function along with new methods of collecting psychophysical data, like Stevens' power law.[12]

The 1950s saw a surge in mathematical theories of psychological processes, including Luce's theory of
choice, Tanner and Swets' introduction of signal detection theory for human stimulus detection, and Miller's
approach to information processing.[6] By the end of the 1950s, the number of mathematical psychologists
had increased from a handful by more than a tenfold, not counting psychometricians. Most of these were
concentrated at the Indiana University, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Stanford.[6][13] Some of these were
regularly invited by the U.S. Social Science Research Counsel to teach in summer workshops in
mathematics for social scientists at Stanford University, promoting collaboration.

To better define the field of mathematical psychology, the mathematical models of the 1950s were brought
together in sequence of volumes edited by Luce, Bush, and Galanter: Two readings[14] and three
handbooks.[15] This series of volumes turned out to be helpful in the development of the field. In the
summer of 1963 the need was felt for a journal for theoretical and mathematical studies in all areas in
psychology, excluding work that was mainly factor analytical. An initiative led by R. C. Atkinson, R. R.
Bush, W. K. Estes, R. D. Luce, and P. Suppes resulted in the appearance of the first issue of the Journal of
Mathematical Psychology in January 1964.[13]

Under the influence of developments in computer science, logic, and language theory, in the 1960s
modeling gravitated towards computational mechanisms and devices. Examples of the latter constitute so
called cognitive architectures (e.g., production rule systems, ACT-R) as well as connectionist systems or
neural networks.

Important mathematical expressions for relations between physical characteristics of stimuli and subjective
perception are Weber–Fechner law, Ekman's law, Stevens's power law, Thurstone's law of comparative
judgment, the theory of signal detection (borrowed from radar engineering), the matching law, and
Rescorla–Wagner rule for classical conditioning. While the first three laws are all deterministic in nature,
later established relations are more fundamentally stochastic. This has been a general theme in the evolution
in mathematical modeling of psychological processes: from deterministic relations as found in classical
physics to inherently stochastic models.

Influential mathematical psychologists

John Anderson Richard C. Atkinson William H. Batchelder
 Jerome Busemeyer R. Duncan Luce George Sperling
Hans Colonius David Marr Saul Sternberg
C. H. Coombs James L. McClelland Patrick Suppes
Robyn Dawes Jeff Miller John A. Swets
Adele Diederich Jay Myung Joshua Tenenbaum
Ehtibar Dzhafarov Louis Narens James T. Townsend
William Kaye Estes Allen Newell Louis L. Thurstone
Jean-Claude Falmagne Robert M. Nosofsky Amos Tversky
B. F. Green Roger Ratcliff Rolf Ulrich
Daniel Kahneman David E. Rumelhart Dirk Vorberg
Roger E. Kirk Herbert A. Simon Eric-Jan Wagenmakers
D. H. Krantz Roger Shepard Elke U. Weber
D. R. J. Laming Richard Shiffrin Thomas D. Wickens
Michael D. Lee Philip L. Smith
Philip Marcus Levy Stanley S. Stevens

Important theories and models[16]

Sensation, perception, and psychophysics

Stevens' power law
Weber–Fechner law

Stimulus detection and discrimination

Signal detection theory

Stimulus identification
Accumulator models
Diffusion models
Neural network/connectionist models
Race models
Random walk models
Renewal models

Simple decision
Cascade model
Level and change race model
Recruitment model
SPRT
 Decision field theory

Memory scanning, visual search

Push-down stack
Serial exhaustive search (SES) model

Error response times

Fast guess model

Sequential effects
Linear operator model

Learning
Linear operator model
Stochastic learning theory

Measurement theory
Theory of conjoint measurement

Journals and organizations

Central journals are the Journal of Mathematical Psychology and the British Journal of Mathematical and
Statistical Psychology. There are three annual conferences in the field, the annual meeting of the Society for
Mathematical Psychology in the U.S, the annual European Mathematical Psychology Group meeting in
Europe, and the Australasian Mathematical Psychology conference.

See also
Computational cognition
Outline of psychology
Psychological statistics
Quantitative psychology

References
1. Batchelder, W. H. (2015). "Mathematical Psychology: History" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/
science/article/pii/B978008097086843059X). In Wright, James D. (ed.). International
Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (2 ed.). Elsevier. pp. 808–815.
doi:10.1016/b978-0-08-097086-8.43059-x (https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fb978-0-08-097086-8.
43059-x). ISBN 978-0-08-097087-5.
 2. Batchelder, W. H.; Colonius, H.; Dzhafarov, E. N.; Myung, J., eds. (2016). New Handbook of
Mathematical Psychology: Volume 1: Foundations and Methodology (https://www.cambridg
e.org/core/books/new-handbook-of-mathematical-psychology/311B223DFFDF494C3EB5B
BBCD11F6921). Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. doi:10.1017/9781139245913 (https://doi.org/10.1017%2F978113924591
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723309).
3. Estes, W. K. (2001-01-01), "Mathematical Psychology, History of" (http://www.sciencedirect.c
om/science/article/pii/B0080430767006471), in Smelser, Neil J.; Baltes, Paul B. (eds.),
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Pergamon, pp. 9412–9416,
doi:10.1016/b0-08-043076-7/00647-1 (https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fb0-08-043076-7%2F0064
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al%27s_wager&oldid=926881871), Wikipedia, vol. 33, no. 3, p. 21,
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5. Leahey, T. H. (1987). A History of Psychology (https://archive.org/details/historyofpsychol00l
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6. Batchelder, W. H. (2002). "Mathematical Psychology". In Kazdin, A. E. (ed.). Encyclopedia of
Psychology (https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofps0000unse). Washington/NY:
APA/Oxford University Press. ISBN 1-55798-654-1.
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Volumes I & II. New York: Wiley.
15. Luce, R. D., Bush, R. R. & Galanter, E. (Eds.) (1963). Handbook of mathematical
psychology. Volumes I-III. New York: Wiley. Volume II from Internet Archive (https://www.archi
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16. Luce, R. Duncan (1986). Response Times: Their Role in Inferring Elementary Mental
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External links
British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology (https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.
wiley.com/journal/20448317)
European Mathematical Psychology Group (https://web.archive.org/web/20070807075848/h
ttp://sma.uni.lu/empg38/)
Journal of Mathematical Psychology (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-mathemati
cal-psychology)
Online tutorials on Mathematical Psychology (https://web.archive.org/web/20071127210050/
http://www.mathpsyc.uni-bonn.de/tutorials.htm) from the Open Distance Learning initiative of
the University of Bonn.
Society for Mathematical Psychology (http://mathpsych.org/)

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