Entropy and Variability Discrimination

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.