Fellow (Emeritus)
and Research Scientist
The John B. Pierce Laboratory

Senior Research Scientist
and Lecturer in Psychology
Yale University

E mail: jstevens@jbpierce.org
Telephone: (203) 562-9901,
ext. 205

CV and Full Bibliography (pdf)

Education

BA, Calvin College, 1950
MA, Michigan State University, 1953
PhD, Harvard University, 1957

Biographical Sketch

Between 1957 and 1966, Dr. Stevens served as an instructor and assistant professor of Psychology at Harvard University. In 1966 he joined The John B. Pierce Laboratory and initiated its Psychophysics Laboratory in which he has served continuously until the present as Fellow. Concurrently, he has served in various capacities in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. He has authored over 125 publications touching on all of the human senses considered from the viewpoint of psychophysics.

Research Interests

Dr. Stevens's research career has been devoted to the investigation of human sensory perception and its mechanisms by means of psychophysical methods. Over the past two decades the primary subject has been the aging of all of the senses. In recent years the primary focus has been on the cutaneous senses (touch, warmth, and cold).

Current Projects

Dr. Stevens is currently serving as a consultant in Dr. Marks's project "Mechanisms of Taste- & Taste-Olfaction Mixture Detection" in the Laboratory of Sensory Information Processing. He also serves as editor of the Laboratory's newsletter.

Representative Publications

Stevens, J. C. Detection of heteroquality taste mixtures. Perception & Psychophysics 57: 18-26, 1995.

Stevens, J. C. Detection of tastes in mixture with other tastes: Issues of masking and aging. Chemical Senses. 21: 211-221, 1996.

Stevens, J. C. & Choo, K. K. Spatial acuity of the body surface over the life span. Somatosensory and Motor Research, 13: 153-166, 1996.

Stevens, J. C., Foulke, E. & Patterson, M. Q. Tactile acuity, aging, and braille reading in long-term blindness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2: 91-106, 1996.

Stevens, J. C. Detection of very complex taste mixtures: generous integration across constituent compounds. Physiology and Behavior, 62: 1137-1143, 1997.

Stevens, J. C. & Traverzo, A. Detection of a target taste in a complex masker. Chemical Senses, 22: 529-534, 1997.

Stevens, J. C., Cruz, L. A., Marks, L. E., & Lakatos, S. A multimodal assessment of sensory thresholds in aging. Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, 53B: P263-P272, 1998.

Stevens, J. C. & Choo, K. K. Temperature sensitivity of the body surface over the life span. Somatosensory and Motor Research, 15:13-28, 1998.

Stevens, J.C., Alvarez-Reeves, M., Dipietro, L., Mack, G.W., and Green, B.G. Decline of tactile acuity in aging: a study of body site, blood flow, and lifetime habits of smoking and physical activity. Somatosensory & Motor Research, 20, 271-279, 2003.