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Information theory and cybernetics have developed along somewhat different lines in Europe and in the U. S. A. This book is to be seen as a contribution towards bridging the gap. Anyone who seeks to apply information theory in the fields of education and psychology very soon comes up against a central diffi culty: in the form in which it was developed by Shannon information theory excludes the semantic aspect. This problem is fundamental for in education, as in psychology, the semantic aspect is the very heart of the matter. Thus, while Attneave, Miller and Quastler, among others, successfully employed the concepts and units of measurement of in formation theory in the interpretation of the findings of experimental psychology, they were obliged to restrict their work to its syntactic and statistical aspects. Before we can make use of the methods and results of information we have to solve the central problem: How can theory in actual teaching, we measure the semantic information of a verbal message? The only way to do this is by extending the theory. A special concept has been deve loped for this purpose: subjective information. In place of an objectively measurable quantity (frequency of sign sequences) we set an empirically determined one: the subjective probability with which the recipient expects a certain sign sequence.
List of contents
1 Foundations of Information Theory.- 1.1 The Communication System.- 1.2 Concepts of Information Theory.- 2 Measurement of the Information of Written Language and the Concept of Subjective Information.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Statistically Based Procedures.- 2.3 Shannon's Guessing-Game Method.- 2.4 The Concept of Subjective Information.- 2.5 Digitizing Prediction by Means of Branching Diagrams.- 2.6 Extension of the Procedure.- 2.7 Simplified Procedures for Determining Subjective Information.- 3 Transinformation Analysis.- 3.1 The Basic Concept of Transinformation Analysis.- 3.2 Didactic Transinformation.- 3.3 Semantic Transinformation.- 3.4 Transinformation in Reading Processes.- 3.5 The Semantic Information of Graphic Representations.- 3.6 Memory Experiments.- 3.7 Cognitive-Process Curve.- 4 Learning and Teaching in the Light of Information Theory.- 4.1 The Model of Information Reception and Processing in Man.- 4.2 Learning Viewed in the Light of Information Theory.- 4.3 Elements of a Theory of Teaching.- 4.4 Elements of a Theory Relating to Basic Texts.- 4.5 Insight and Transfer.- 5 Use of the Guessing Game to Determine Subjective Information: A Practical Guide.- 5.1 Selection of Text Sample and Preparation of Experimental Material.- 5.2 How to Carry out the Experiment: Some Examples.- 5.3 Special Problems in Conducting the Experiments.- 5.4 Guessing Games Using Computers with Typewriters as Input and Output Units.- 5.5 Tables and Graphs.- Appendix. Notes.- Literature.- Author Index.
About the author
Klaus Weltner ist an der Universität Frankfurt tätig.
