title: Entropy and variability discrimination.
abstract: Two experiments examined college students' discrimination of complex visual displays that involved different degrees of variability or "entropy." Displays depicted 16 black and white line drawings of various types (e.g., a brain, a clock, a hand); the participants were required to classify a display in terms of its variability (e.g., a low-variability display contains many identical items, whereas a high-variability display contains few identical items). The participants' accuracy and reaction time scores on a 2-alternative forced-choice discrimination disclosed that people can and do use entropy to classify different levels of visual display variability. Individuals differed in their use of absolute rather than relative entropy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, USA. meyoung@siu.edu
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Young
authors.forename: E A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Wasserman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003071:Cognition; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D019277:Entropy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D012718:Set, Psychology