Thurstone ( 1959, p . 20 ) used the term discriminal process to refer to the " psychological values of psychophysics "; that is, the values on a psychological continuum associated with a given stimulus.
2.
The " discriminal dispersion " of a stimulus " i " is the dispersion of fluctuations of the " discriminal process " for a uniform repeated stimulus, denoted R _ i, where S _ i represents the " mode " of such values.
3.
In somewhat more technical terms, the law of comparative judgment is a mathematical representation of a "'discriminal process "', which is any process in which a comparison is made between pairs of a collection of entities with respect to magnitudes of an attribute, trait, attitude, and so on.