Differential context effects in intramodal and cross-modal perception

When two or more sets of stimuli are presented to either the same sense modality or to different modalities, the resulting judgments of perceived magnitude can vary markedly as a function of the sets of stimulus values - the stimulus context. These differential effects of context are most readily explained as the product of an adaptation-like process, located or initiated in the central nervous system, that operates independently on different sensory channels within a given modality.