JUST NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE
Charles François (2004). JUST NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE, International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, 2(1): 1805.
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 1805 ▶ |
| Object type | General information |
The least quantitative stimulus that can be perceived by an observer or experimenter.
This is a very important notion for systemics and cybernetics, because, under the threshold of perception, we fall into the realm of invisibility and we may well incur into “ignorance of our own ignorance”. As a consequence, we may fall prey to unsuitable modelling.
W. Mc CULLOCH writes that JND “… has been found in the middle range of perception to be roughly proportional to the size of the stimulus” (1974, p.6).
However, the JND threshold becomes lower for a trained observer of some specific kind of phenomena: Mc CULLOCH gives the example of the Golden Proportion, much more easily perceived by architects, sculptors and painters.