A comparison of different techniques for scaling perceived urgency

In this paper four experiments are reported which compare different scaling techniques for assessing the perceived urgency of one set of seven auditory stimuli. The differences between scaling traditional continua and 'second order' continua such as perceived urgency are discussed. In three studies, free modulus magnitude estimation, fixed modulus magnitude estimation, and category rating are each used to measure the perceived urgency of the same set of stimuli. In the fourth experiment, the exponents measured by these techniques are validated by cross modality matching between perceived urgency and line length (Stevens 1969). It is recommended that psychophysical techniques, in particular free modulus magnitude estimation and cross modality matching, are suitable for measuring second order continua such as perceived urgency.