Medical Psychophysics

Psychophysical methods, data and theory have interesting clinical applications in the field of medicine. Physicians have special needs for new methods that reveal a patient’s self-report of current health status. Subjects often are asked to express judgments about variables such as pain intensity, respiratory discomfort during exercise, and quality of life. Examples described in this paper are confined to pain assessment and its health implications. All assessment instruments discussed in this paper are computer administered and allow for expression of dynamic (continuous over time) judgments. Such assessment data can be evaluated by physicians in trying to understand the health status of their patients before, during, and after treatment.