Relationships between judgements of the complexity,pleasingness and interestingness of music

Forty unfamiliar, one-minute samples of modern jazz were rated by 132 undergraduates for judged complexity, pleasingness and interestingness, in a between-subjects design. Pleasingness and interestingness were positively correlated and both were decreasing linear functions of complexity, although the correlation between interestingness and complexity was low and only marginally significant. It appears that pleasingness acts as a suppressor on the interestingness/complexity correlation: with pleasingness partialled out the correlation was positive and highly significant. Partialling had only small effects on the other correlations. Results suggest that techniques used previously to study non-musical stimuli may also be applicable to music.     

Evaluations of subjective complexity,pleasingness and interestingness for a series of random polygons varying in complexity

A series of random-shaped polygons varying in number of sides in approximately even logarithmic steps from four to 160 sides was generated. Ss were required to compare all possible pairs of figures on one of three scales-subjective complexity, pleasingness and interestingness. Subjective evaluations of complexity continued to increase with informational content. Pleasingness evaluations described a bimodal function, peafeing at the 6-sided and 28-sided levels then falling rapidly with increased complexity. Interestingness efaluations rosé to a peafe at the 28-sided figure and remained high throughout the rest of the series.     

Predicting memory for pictures from rankings of interestingness, pleasingness, complexity, figure-ground and clarity.

Pictures used in the test phase of a picture-recognition task were ranked by 10 university students for interestingness, pleasingness, complexity, figure-ground, and clarity. The scale values obtained from these rankings were then correlated with the errors made by other subjects in the test phase of the picture-recognition task. Figure-ground and clarity were found, for the most part, to be reliable predictors of the errors made to both the "old" and "new" subsets of pictures in two experiments. Complexity, while not as consistent a predictor of either figure-ground or clarity, was a reasonably good predictor. Interestingness and pleasingness were not reliable predictors of errors.     

The curvex: Simple order structure revealed in ratings of complexity, interestingness, and pleasantness

An alternative interpretation is offered of some factor analytic studies of ratings of aesthetic stimuli. Earlier interpretation has been in terms of two orthogonal factors, Evaluation and Activity. The re-interpretation is based on the circular fan-like structure of the factor plot, reflected in a high degree of order in the correlation matrix (the curvex structure), the semantically meaningful progression of the bi-polar adjective scales around the circle, and the fact that the stimulus objects in some cases are located along an ordered continuum in the factor space. Coombs and Kao's application of unfolding concepts to factor analysis of preferential choice data and Guttman's concept of order factor analysis is applied. It is proposed that the ratings reflect one underlying stimulus dimension, objective complexity, and that the rating scales represent ideal points along this dimension. The scales Pleasing, Interesting and Complex are hypothesized to reach their ideal point at increasingly higher levels of objective complexity. Ten of the 13 factor analyses studied were in agreement with the hypothesis.     

The effects of size,clutter, and complexity on vanishing-point distances in visual imagery

Summary The portrayal of vanishing-point distances in visual imagery was examined in six experiments. In all experiments, subjects formed visual images of squares, and the squares were to be oriented orthogonally to subjects' line of sight. The squares differed in their level of surface complexity, and were either undivided, divided into 4 equally sized smaller squares, or divided into 16 equally sized smaller squares. Squares also differed in stated referent size, and ranged from 3 in. to 128 ft along each side. After subjects had formed an image of a specified square, they transformed their image so that the square was portrayed to move away from them. Eventually, the imaged square was portrayed to be so far away that if it were any further away, it could not be identified. Subjects estimated the distance to the square that was portrayed in their image at that time, the vanishing-point distance, and the relationship between stated referent size and imaged vanishing-point distance was best described by a power function with an exponent less than 1. In general, there were trends for exponents (slopes on log axes) to increase slightly and for multiplicative constants (y intercepts on log axes) to decrease as surface complexity increased. No differences in exponents or in multiplicative constants were found when the vanishing-point was approached from either sub-threshold or suprathreshold directions. When clutter in the form of additional imaged objects located to either side of the primary imaged object was added to the image, the exponent of the vanishing-point function increased slightly and the multiplicative constant decreased. The success of a power function (and the failure of the size-distance invariance hypothesis) in describing the vanishing-point distance function calls into question the notions (a) that a constant grain size exists in the, imaginal visual field at a given location and (b) that grain size specifies a lower limit in the storage of information in visual images.     

The influence of expertise and of physical complexity on visual short-term memory consolidation

We investigated whether the expertise of a perceiver and the physical complexity of a stimulus influence consolidation of visual short-term memory (VSTM) in a S1-S2 (Stimulus 1-Stimulus 2) change detection task. Consolidation is assumed to make transient perceptual representations in VSTM more durable, and it is investigated by postexposure of a mask shortly after offset of the perceived stimulus (S1; 17 to 483?ms). We presented colours, Chinese characters, pseudocharacters, and novel symbols to novices (Germans) or experts of Chinese language (Chinese readers). Physical complexity was manipulated by the number of strokes. Unfamiliar material was remembered worse than familiar material (Experiments 1, 2, and 3). For novices the absolute VSTM performance was better for physically simple than for complex material, whereas for experts the complexity did not matter-Chinese readers memorized Chinese characters (Experiment 3). Articulatory suppression did not change these effects (Experiment 2). We always observed a strong effect of SOA, but this effect was influenced neither by physical complexity nor by expertise; only the length of the interstimulus interval between S1 and the mask was relevant. This was observed even with short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 100?ms (Experiment 2) and in comparing colours and characters (Experiment 5). However, masks impaired memory if they were presented at the locations of the to-be-memorized items, but not beside them-that is, interference was location-based (Experiment 6). We explain the effect of SOA by the assumption that it takes time to stop encoding of information presented at item locations with the offset of S1. The increasing resistance against interference by irrelevant material appears as consolidation of S1.     

The influence of expertise and of physical complexity on visual short-term memory consolidation

This paper examines controversial claims about the merit of “unconscious thought” for making complex decisions. In four experiments, participants were presented with complex decisions and were asked to choose the best option immediately, after a period of conscious deliberation, or after a period of distraction (said to encourage “unconscious thought processes”). In all experiments the majority of participants chose the option predicted by their own subjective attribute weighting scores, regardless of the mode of thought employed. There was little evidence for the superiority of choices made “unconsciously”, but some evidence that conscious deliberation can lead to better choices. The final experiment suggested that the task is best conceptualized as one involving “online judgement” rather than one in which decisions are made after periods of deliberation or distraction. The results suggest that we should be cautious in accepting the advice to “stop thinking” about complex decisions.     

Effects of information conflict and complexity in visual figures on voluntary visual exploration, using structural information theory

This study was designed to examine the effects of information conflict and complexity on voluntary visual exploration quantitatively. 31 adults viewed each of 16 slides of geometrical figures and places for as long as they wished. The stimuli had two values of information conflict and complexity which had been calculated by means of structural information theory. Free looking times indicated that only when information conflict was low, voluntary visual exploration was positively correlated with complexity. Furthermore, voluntary visual exploration correlated positively with information conflict when complexity was low.     

Rigidity,instability and dimensionality

The paper takes a detailed look at a surprising new aspect of the dynamics of rigid bodies. Far from the usual consideration of rigid body theory as a merely technical chapter of classical physics, I demonstrate here that there are solutions to the conservation equations of mechanics that imply the spontaneous, unpredictable splitting of a rigid body in free rotation, something that has direct implications for the problem of causality. The paper also shows that the instability revealed in indeterminist splitting processes does not depend solely on the bodies’ inertial properties but also on the number of dimensions of the physical space they inhabit. The paper concludes with a conjecture on the behavior of rigid bodies in four-dimensional space.     

An information theory analysis of visual complexity and dissimilarity

The subjective complexity of a computer-generated bitmap image can be measured by magnitude estimation scaling, and its objective complexity can be measured by its compressed file size. There is a high correlation between these measures of subjective and objective complexity over a large set of marine electronic chart and radar images. The subjective dissimilarity of a pair of bitmap images can be predicted from subjective and objective measures of the complexity of each image, and from the subjective and objective complexity of the image produced by overlaying the two simple images. In addition, the subjective complexity of the image produced by overlaying two simple images can be predicted from the subjective complexity of the simple images and the subjective dissimilarity of the image pair. The results of the experiments that generated these complexity and dissimilarity judgments are consistent with a theory, outlined here, that treats objective and subjective measures of image complexity and dissimilarity as vectors in Euclidean space.     

The dimensionality of charisma

The lack of conceptual and operational definitions has proved to be a stumbling block to empirical research on charismatic leadership. In this study, a scale is created measuring House's (1977) nine charismatic effects. Factor analysis of the scale yields three dimensions analogous to expert power, referent power, and job involvement. These three constructs are then used to predict subordinate ratings of leaders' charisma.The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Mr. Philip Koek in the collection of data and Ms. Dawn Voigt for help with data analysis.     

The effect of irrelevant surround on speeded visual discriminations varying in complexity

To measure the effect of varying stimulus material on visual matching, a three-factor experimental design was employed, with “same”-“different” RT as the main dependent variable. Pairs of sequences of meaningless shapes served as stimuli, varying in discriminability (high or low), complexity (sequence lengths of 1, 2, 5, or 8 shapes), and level of pair difference (identical sequences or sequences with one pair differing). All independent variables significantly affected RT, with (a) high-discriminability stimuli being reacted to faster than low, (b)RT increasing with sequence pair length, and (c)“same”-response RTs interacting with “different”-response RTs. A significant triple-order interaction component implied that, while a single-process self-terminating feature testing model could accommodate data from the low-discriminability condition, the high-discriminability data did not fit this model. The results are taken as support for a dual-process model to account for the data from “same”-“different” RT tasks. epaxtment of