Hello group,

I am not sure if this is the right place, however, I am sure that some people here can help me with a pointer.

I have modeled data from an experiment using multiple regression analysis. The experiment and its analysis is also not important and shall not be disucssed here. The statistics is done and fine. I only provide a brief overview for a background understanding.

One of the IVs was time representing the time left until an event. The event represented something positive for the participant.

The DV was the relevance of the event and participants provided a rating of relevance for differnt levels of time differnece between now and the happending of the event. The IV of time was measured on 5 distinct levels. The means look like this:

*

* * *

* -(-2(-----------(-1)-----------(0)------------(1)-----------(2)-->

The event happens at time (0) that means that at -2 the event lies two time units in the future. -1 is one time unit in the future and 0 is the time where the event is happening (now). 1 and 2 is after the event has happend.

As expected the relevance is rising the closer it gets to 0. After the event, it is falling sharp - actually much fast than it was rising before.

Although this is easy to interpret from the graph by a simple look, I would like to know more about other effects in human behaviour that have effects with exponential character. Effects of arosal apparently behave exponential character. Visual stimuli and accustic stimuli are actually experienced the other way round - logarithmically. I would like to know more about such functional patterns in human behaviour.

Can somebody recommend a book/paper that discusses such (functional) pattern of human haviour (not sure if I am using the right terminology here). The way human experience relevance based on certain factors (such as time factors) and other stiumuli should be well known from literature.

I would like to know more about that and get some literature to which I can refer for a theoretical background.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards, Karl

-- GMX Produkte empfehlen und ganz einfach Geld verdienen! Satte Provisionen für GMX Partner: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/partner