Separating perceptual and linguistic effects of context shifts upon absolute judgments.

In accordance with the usual strategy of parsimony in science, the effects of extreme contexts upon absolute judgment were interpreted initially as illustrating a single process of relativity of judgment or adaptation level. The most economical interpretation of the data to be presented here necessitates the postulation of two such processes, both producing contrast effects in the same direction. One of these processes, transient and reversible, is found in both of two judgmental languages, and is designated perceptual. The other, irreversible and specific to an unfamiliar, experimenter-defined response language, is designated semantic. Two papers published in 1958 independently suggest dividing the judgmental phenomena currently grouped under Helson's concept of adaptation level (e.g., Helson, 1947, 1948, 1959) into semantic or linguistic effects on the one hand, and perceptual or endorgan effects on the other. One of these papers (Campbell, Lewis, & Hunt, 1958) argued that the "situationally relative," "novel," "arbitrary" and "restricted" response language ordinarily used in the method of single stimuli could well have produced the contrast effects resulting from extreme anchors or extreme contexts without generating distortions