Cognitive complexity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cognitive psychology

Perception
Visual perception Object recognition Face recognition Pattern recognition
Attention
Memory
Aging and memory Emotional memory Learning Long-term memory
Metacognition
Language
Thinking
Concept Reasoning Decision making Problem solving
Numerical cognition
Numerosity adaptation effect
v t e

Cognitive complexity describes cognition along a simplicity-complexity axis. It is the subject of academic study in fields including personal construct psychology,^[1] organisational theory^[2] and human-computer interaction.^[3]

History

First proposed by James Bieri in 1955.^[1]

In psychology

Cognitive complexity is a psychological characteristic or psychological variable that indicates how complex or simple is the frame and perceptual skill of a person. A person who is measured high on cognitive complexity tends to perceive nuances and subtle differences which a person with a lower measure, indicating a less complex cognitive structure for the task or activity, does not.

an aspect of a person's cognitive functioning which at one end is defined by the use of many constructs with many relationships to one another (complexity) and at the other end by the use of few constructs with limited relationships to one another (simplicity)

Lawrence Pervin, Personality^[3]

It is used as part of one of the several variations of the viable non-empirical evaluation model GOMS (Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection rules); in particular the GOMS/CCT methodology.

Cognitive complexity can have various meanings:

the number of mental structures we use, how abstract they are, and how elaborately they interact to shape our perceptions.
"an individual-difference variable associated with a broad range of communication skills and related abilities ... [which] indexes the degree of differentiation, articulation, and integration within a cognitive system".^[4]

In computer science

Further information: Complexity

In human-computer interaction, cognitive (or psychological) complexity distinguishes human factors (related to psychology and human cognition) from, for example, computational complexity.^[5]

In artificial intelligence

In an attempt to explain how humans perceive relevance, Cognitive complexity is defined as an extension of the notion of Kolmogorov complexity. It amounts to the length of the shortest description available to the observer. Here is an example : Individuating a particular Inuit woman among one hundred people is simpler in a village in Congo rather than in an Inuit village.

Cognitive complexity is related to probability (see Simplicity theory): situations are cognitively improbable if they are simpler to describe than to generate. Human individuals attach two complexity values to events:

description complexity (see above definition)
generation complexity: the size of the minimum set of parameter values than the 'world' (as imagined by the observer) needs to generate the event.

To 'generate' an event such as an encounter with an Inuit woman in Congo, one must add up the complexity of each event in the causal chain that brought her there. The significant gap between both complexities (hard to produce, easy to describe) makes the encounter improbable and thus narratable.

Related terms

Related to cognitive complexity is the term behavioral complexity, used by some researchers in organizational studies, organizational culture and management.^[6]

References

↑ 1.0 1.1 Bell, R.C. (2004-02-14). "Cognitive complexity". The Internet Encyclopaedia of Personal Construct Psychology. The Psychology of Personal Constructs. Retrieved 2010-04-30.
↑ Villanova University. "Analyzing Organizations Through Cognitive Complexity". Retrieved 29 April 2010.
↑ 3.0 3.1 Rauterberg, Matthias (1996). "How to Measure Cognitive Complexity in Human-Computer Interaction". In Robert Trappl(ed). Proceedings of the Thirteenth European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research. Thirteenth European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research II. University of Vienna, Austria. pp. 815–820. ISBN 3-85206-133-4.
↑ Burleson, B.R., & Caplan, S.E. (1998), "Cognitive complexity". In J.C. McCroskey, J.A. Daly, M.M. Martin, & M.J. Beatty (Eds.), Communication and personality: Trait perspectives (233–286). Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press
↑ Thomas, John C.; Richards, John T. (2008). "Achieving Psychological Simplicity: Methods And Measures To Reduce Cognitive Complexity". In Sears, Andrew; Jacko, Julie A. The human-computer interaction handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications (2nd ed.). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp. 498–507. ISBN 978-0-8058-5870-9.
↑ See Robert Hooijberg, Behavioral complexity and managerial effectiveness: a new perspective on managerial leadership, University of Michigan, 1992; Daniel R. Denison, Robert Hooijberg, Robert E. Quinn, Toward a theory of behavioral complexity in managerial leadership, University of Michigan, September 1993

External links

v t e Psychology

History Portal Psychologist

Basic psychology	Abnormal Affective science Affective neuroscience Behaviorism Behavioral neuroscience Cognitive Cognitive neuroscience Comparative Cultural Developmental Differential Evolutionary Experimental Intelligence Mathematical Neuropsychology Personality Psycholinguistics Psychophysics Psychophysiology Social Theoretical

Applied psychology	Anomalistic Applied behavior analysis Assessment Clinical Community Consumer Counseling Educational Feminist Forensic Health Industrial and organizational Legal Media Military Occupational health Pastoral Political Psychometrics Religion School Sport and exercise Suicidology Systems Traffic

Methodologies	Animal testing Archival research Behavior genetics Behavior epigenetics Case study Content analysis Experiments Human subject research Interviews Neuroimaging Observation Qualitative research Quantitative research Self-report inventory Statistical surveys

Orientations	Adlerian Analytical Behaviorism Cognitive behavioral therapy Cognitivism Descriptive Ecological systems theory Existential therapy Family therapy Feminist therapy Gestalt psychology Humanistic Logotherapy Narrative therapy Philosophy Psychoanalysis Psychoanalytic theory Psychodynamic psychotherapy Rational emotive behavior therapy Transpersonal

Notable psychologists	Alfred Adler Gordon Allport Albert Bandura Aaron Beck Hubert Benoit John Bowlby Raymond Cattell Kenneth and Mamie Clark Albert Ellis Erik Erikson Hans Eysenck Leon Festinger Viktor Frankl Sigmund Freud Harry Harlow Donald O. Hebb Clark L. Hull William James Carl Jung Jerome Kagan Kurt Lewin Ivar Lovaas Abraham Maslow David McClelland George A. Miller Neal E. Miller Walter Mischel Ivan Pavlov Jean Piaget Carl Rogers Stanley Schachter B. F. Skinner Edward Thorndike John B. Watson Wilhelm Wundt

Lists	Counseling topics Disciplines Important publications Organizations Outline Psychologists Psychotherapies Research methods Schools of thought Timeline Topics

Wiktionary definition Wiktionary category Wikisource Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikinews Wikibooks

v t e Major fields of computer science

Mathematical foundations	Mathematical logic Set theory Number theory Graph theory Type theory Category theory Numerical analysis Information theory Combinatorics Boolean algebra

Theory of computation	Automata theory Computability theory Computational complexity theory Quantum computing theory

Algorithms, data structures	Analysis of algorithms Algorithm design Computational geometry

Programming languages, compilers	Parsers Interpreters Procedural programming Object-oriented programming Functional programming Logic programming Programming paradigms

Concurrent, parallel, distributed systems	Multiprocessing Grid computing Concurrency control

Software engineering	Requirements analysis Software design Computer programming Formal methods Software testing Software development process

System architecture	Computer architecture Computer organization Operating systems

Telecommunication, networking	Computer audio Routing Network topology Cryptography

Databases	Database management systems Relational databases SQL Transactions Database indexes Data mining

Artificial intelligence	Automated reasoning Computational linguistics Computer vision Evolutionary computation Expert systems Machine learning Natural language processing Robotics

Computer graphics	Visualization Computer animation Image processing

Human–computer interaction	Computer accessibility User interfaces Wearable computing Ubiquitous computing Virtual reality

Scientific computing	Artificial life Bioinformatics Cognitive science Computational chemistry Computational neuroscience Computational physics Numerical algorithms Symbolic mathematics

Note: Computer science can also be divided into different topics or fields according to the ACM Computing Classification System.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.