INFLUENCE OF INTENSITY OF VISUAL STIMULI ON PSYCHOLOGICAL REFRACTORY PHASE

The paper describes some experiments designed to test the predictions of an intermittency hypothesis concerning the influence of stimulus intensity on the delay in reaction to the second of a pair of visual stimuli. No agreement has been found between the experimental data and the predictions. A variant of the intermittency hypothesis is proposed in which the central system is not assumed to handle information on an all-or-none basis, but rather on the basis of a reduces sensitivity to new information; the sensitivity is assumed to be minimal immediately after the passage of a stimulus and is gradually restored to its initial value. Some psychophysical and neurophysiological evidence is given. © 1969.