While doing repetitive breathing in a standing position, kept my hands about two inches apart parallel to each other and concentrated on the centre of the palms. I felt the heat sensation for 10 seconds and then changed to the attraction (magnetic) when hands were kept at a distance of 3 inches. After visiting the temple, it was found to increase two more inches. The Ruler was used to measure the distance between the hands. Is it possible to mention the measurement technique as a Psychophysical approach?
Thanking You
Vinu V
Hi Vinu V
I believe that the problem imposed by the measurement technique used is in the location and positioning of the body to explain how it is inserted in space and the posture used.
Good luck!
Lucilene Almeida
No, I don't think so. Psychophysics is the discipline in which the relationship between the parameters of a physical object or process or event and the intensity or size of its mental representaion is investigated. For example, if you observe cars going with certain speeds (physically measured in mph), how fast do they appear to move in your perception (say on a scale from zero to one thousand, when one thousand means the highest speed you can imagine)?
In your example I cannot recognize that something physical (the distance between hands?) is compared to how it appears subjectively.
Thank you Detlef Ruschin. Some feeling (Stimulus) is there, but we can't classify it as physical. Some researchers mention it as a subtle, bioplasmic or energy sensation. It is true that some stimulus is there, but needed to prove it scientifically.
Vinu, further to my remark above, normally the physical phenomenon that varies in a psychophysical experiment (e.g. the car speed in my example) is called "stimulus", and the mental phenomenon that is related to the physical one (e.g. the subjective impression that a car moves more or less fast) is called "response". Psychophysics seeks the mathematical relation between the stimulus and the response so that, in the future, it will be possible to predict, how a person will respond to a given stimulus.
There exists the somewhat related discipline of psychometrics, in which only mental phenomena are quantified (e.g. how happy are you currently, or how much do you think your colleagues are respecting you, or how strong is the itch on your skin etc. etc.).
Perhaps you want to somehow measure (i.e. to assign a number) to those energy sensations and note under what circumstances they occur. You need a scale for that. Look for example at pain scales (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_scale) to see how such things work. Then you could call this a psychometric approach or psychometric procedure.
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