Information input overload, does it exist? Research at organism level and group level
✍ Scribed by Fredrik Bergström
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1995
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 907 KB
- Volume
- 40
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 8756-6079
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Continuous information processing is egsential for any living system. A living system's chance of surviving is predicted by its ability to process information.
Miller (1978) is one of the advocates of this idea. To investig~te what happens when the amount of input information to a single channel is gradually increased, one experiment WM carried out at two levele-orga?ism and group-of living systems, Human subjects were instructed to solve sunple mathematical problems in a given time interval. The time interval was decreased for each s u c c d v e expoaura which meant that the information input rate (bite per second) increased. The output rate waa ale0 identified. The subjects were male and female university students, who took part in a fowyear study program in systems science, who had an age range from 20 to 29. The number of aamplee at the organism level were 7 and at the group level 6. I expected, according to Miller's theory, the output rate to increese at f i but aftera while tobecome constant.1 ale0 expeded the groupsto have a lower channel capacity than the organisma The study indicated that the possible output rate is dependent on the living system's emotional reactions. A state of confusion occurred, at both levels, when the input rate reached a critical level. The output rate, at both levels, increased slowly after the state of confusion which agrees with the expected d t , namely that the output rate after a while becomes constant. The information procedng h e might be more complex and full of nuances than was conceptualized by Miller.