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There is little remaining debate about whether information-theoretical
analysis in psychology led anywhere besides "down the garden path". The
people doing that research all thought they had a "powerful tool" and said so
many times over in plain English. In fact, all they had was a
statistic that, like all statistics, tells you nothing about the thing
that you actually want to understand, i.e. the underlying physical
mechanisms.
The psychologists' information statistic did not even indicate the thing
that people imagined that it did (i.e. transmitted information); that relation
was always assumed, but never proven. Whether the fad of applying
information theory to neurons (which is hardly new) will lead anywhere in
particular remains to be seen. Like the perceptual psychologists, the
neuroscience users may be making unjustified tacit
assumptions. There are plenty of "users' but few "understanders" out
there. Application to neurons might seem to indicate that one
method of encoding appears to be more "efficient" (say) than another, but it can
never, ever tell you how the system actually operates. Never.
The psychologists still don't understand this point ... - Lance Nizami
In a message dated 2/27/2009 4:14:56 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Thanks
for the interesting bibliography. One note I would add though,
is that, with the exception of the Luce paper, these publications
precede a rather significant boom in the use of info theory in the
computational neuroscience world. The use of a communication
channel
analog in cognitive psychology might be a stretch, but for
neural-
level perception studies it has become quite a powerful
tool. Seeing
how these studies are slowly branching towards
high-level perception I
would say that the debate (if any) is
probably still open.
Best,
Paris
On Feb 27, 2009, at 1:04
PM, Iftikhar Riaz (Lance) Nizami wrote:
> Dear Dr. Pinter and
others,
>
> A comprehensive critical review that argues that "The
human being is
> NOT a Shannon communication channel" does not
exist in print, to my
> knowledge. And no editor is going
to allow such a paper to be
> published, because there are too
many prominent people who stand to
> lose if their
misinterpretations are made public. Some of those
> people
are senior editors of well-known journals. There are,
>
however, a number of published papers that question whether the use
> of information-transmission measures in psychology was really
useful:
>
> Cronbach, L.J. (1955) On the non-rational
application of
> information measures in psychology. In:
Information theory in
> psychology (pp. 14-30), ed. H. Quastler.
Glencoe, Illinois: The Free
> Press.
> Luce, R.D. (2003)
Whatever happened to information theory in
> psychology? Rev.
Gen. Psych. 7, 183-188.
> Gregory, R.L. (1980) Whatever happened
to information theory? (2)
> Perception, 9,
489-492.
> Laming, D. (1973) Mathematical Psychology. Academic Press,
NY.
> Ashby, F.G. (1995). Resurrecting information theory. The
American
> Journal of Psychology, 108, 609-614.
>
> A
outstanding (and unfairly ignored) paper that deals decisively
>
with the issue of what "informational" absolute judgment experiments
> actually measure is:
>
> Siegel, W. (1972) Memory
effects in the method of absolute
> judgment. Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 94, 121-131.
>
> - Lance Nizami PhD,
Decatur, GA 30030
>
>
>
> In a message dated 2/26/2009
11:30:22 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, andzsinszan@xxxxxxxxx
>
writes:
> Dear Lance Nizami,
>
> What you wrote regarding
Information Theory is quite interesting to
> me, as I daily meet people
doing automatic speech recognition, whom
> are really difficulty to
convince that there is life beyond
> information theory and Markov
chains.
> Can you please give us some references that argues that "The
human
> being is NOT a Shannon communication channel".
> Or at
least focusing on the controversial relation between perception
> and
information theory.
>
> I appreciate your help.
>
>
Best regards.
>
> Gabor
Pinter
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed,
Feb 25, 2009 at 1:44 AM, Iftikhar Riaz (Lance) Nizami
>
<Nizamii2@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I did my Master's on this
subject, and had to chance to read
> Attneave and
> >
the rest of the literature in depth. Information theory as
> applied to
> > psychology, as popularized by Attneave
after Garner & Hake, has
> nothing at
> > all to do
with transmission of anything. When applied to
>
traditional
> > absolute judgment (identification) experiments, for
example, it is
> merely an
> > alternative measure of
short-term sensory memory. Which has
> nothing to
do
> > with Claude Shannon's "general communications system".
In your
> case, memory
> > capacity is probably what the
analysis will indicate. I am
> surprised that
> >
anyone uses the Garner-Hake information approach anymore;
>
mathematical
> > psychologists (Duncan Luce, Donald Laming, Sandy
MacRae, etc.)
> recognized
> > its severe limitations
years ago and abandoned it. So
> (eventually) did
>
> acoustics users like Neff and Lutfi. The human being is NOT
a
> > Shannon communication channel. Granted, the measures that
result
> from
> > processing the confusion matrix are
covariance measures of a
> sort. In that
> > case,
ordinary covariance measures may provide a more meaningful
> way
of
> > analyzing your data. In response to your question, then,
none of
> TRANS,
> > TRANS/INPUT or TRANS/TI are
appropriate measures for your purposes.
> > Information theory
doesn't work that way. Attneave got the math
>
right,
> > but that had already been done; but Attneave's
interpretations
> (after Garner
> > & Hake) were all
dead wrong. - Lance Nizami BSc (Physics) MSc
>
(Biomedical
> > Engineering) PhD (Psychophysics), Decatur, GA
30030
> >
> > In a message dated 2/24/2009 4:54:12 A.M.
Eastern Standard Time,
> > caro_jacquier@xxxxxxxx writes:
>
>
> > Dear members,
> >
> > I would like to
analyse phonetic feature transmission (especially
>
voicing
> > and place of articulation of french plosive consonants)
on the
> basis of
> > individual confusion matrices. My
study is about compressed speech
> > perception in dyslexic
adults.
> > I have already downloaded the software for information
transfer
> and SINFA
> > analysis (Stuart Rosen ) and I
have run the analyses (on 32
> subjects).
> > My first
question is: which value is the more relevant in the
> report
(TRANS,
> > TRANS/INPUT or TRANS/TI) ?
> > My second
question is about individual confusion matrices: Do I
> have to
do
> > one analyse per subject ?
> >
> > I hope
that someone could help me.
> > Thank you very much.
> >
Best regards,
> >
> > Caroline
> >
>
>
> >
> > ________________________________
> > A
Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy
steps!
>
> A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just
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