The Representation of Dynamic Structures

Abstract

While axiomatic measurement has been widely used to define static attributes of some objects, there scarcely has been an axiomatic treatment of dynamic attributes, i.e. attributes that change over time. Normally, such attributes are treated by system theoretic methods. Unfortunately, the application of linear system theory is based on assumptions, which are difficult to fulfill for most psychological applications. However, despite these difficulties it is possible to apply linear system theory to psychology if it is combined with axiomatic measurement theory. For systems with scalar input and output quantities it is shown that after some modifications the theory of additive conjoint measurement is suitable for system identification.