%0 Journal Article
%T Correlations Between Hysteretic Categorical and Continuous Judgments of Perceptual Stimuli Supporting a Unified Dynamical Systems Approach to Perception.
%A Kim S
%A Frank TD
%J Perception
%V 47
%N 1
%D Jan 2018
%M 28945152
%F 1.695
%R 10.1177/0301006617731047
%X We report from two variants of a figure-ground experiment that is known in the literature to involve a bistable perceptual domain. The first variant was conducted as a two-alternative forced-choice experiment and in doing so tested participants on a categorical measurement scale. The second variant involved a Likert scale measure that was considered to represent a continuous measurement scale. The two variants were conducted as a single within-subjects experiment. Measures of bistability operationalized in terms of hysteresis size scores showed significant positive correlations across the two response conditions. The experimental findings are consistent with a dualistic interpretation of self-organizing perceptual systems when they are described on a macrolevel by means of so-called amplitude equations. This is explicitly demonstrated for a Lotka-Volterra-Haken amplitude equation model of task-related brain activity. As a by-product, the proposed dynamical systems perspective also sheds new light on the anchoring problem of producing numerical, continuous judgments.