Psychophysical linguistics

The type of judgment required in this case is one of matching or similarity. For example, does “I have measured out my life with tablespoons” have the same or different meaning from Prufrock’s declaration? If different, how much different is it? Such judgments of matching or similarity are commonly used in linguistic experiments yet their theoretical basis is widely unknown. Although such judgments of similarity or dissimilarity occur as routinely as judgments of largeness or smallness they are based on a different principle. Judgments of similarity or dissimilarity require for their analysis a very different treatment, a different theoretical basis, than do judgments of largeness or smallness.