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The Representational Effect in Complex Systems: A Distributed Representation Approach

The Representational Effect in Complex Systems: A Distributed Representation Approach Johnny Chuah (chuah.5@osu.edu) The Ohio State University 204 Lazenby Hall, 1827 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA Jiajie Zhang (jiajie.zhang@uth.tmc.edu) Todd R. Johnson (todd.r.johnson@uth.tmc.edu) University of Texas at Houston 7000 Fannin, Suite 600, Houston, TX 77030, USA Abstract The representational effect refers to the phenomenon that different isomorphic representations of a common structure can generate dramatically different representational efficiencies, task difficulties, and behavioral outcomes. This paper presents a study of applying distributed representations to systematically analyze the representational effect in complex real world systems. Distributed representation is a representational system that is composed of internal and external information that is processed in a dynamic, interactive, and interwoven manner. The representational effect is observed and studied in a series of experiments involving various navigational instruments used in aviation. The cognitive task was decomposed into its components and the information distribution across internal and external representations for each component was identified. The experimental results showed that the task difficulties of different instruments correlate positively with the amount of external information for the component tasks, as predicted by the distributed representation analysis. Introduction The information necessary for the performance of almost any everyday task is distributed across information perceived from the external world and information retrieved from the internal mind. These tasks are known as distributed cognitive tasks (Zhang & Norman, 1994). The external representations constructed from the information extracted from external objects (such as written symbols) and the internal representations in the mind (such as schemas) dynamically integrate and interweave to result in a rich pattern of cognitive behavior. The principle of distributed representations is that a distributed cognitive task involves a system of distributed representations that consists of internal and external representations (Zhang & Norman, 1994, 1995). The task is neither exclusively dependent on internally nor exclusively dependent on externally processed information, but rather on the interaction of the two information spaces formed by the internal and external representations. In the aviation industry, there are a wide variety of navigational systems. Among them there is a set of very basic navigational instruments. These instruments are selectively tuned to transmitting radio stations on the ground. The received signals are then presented in a display in the cockpit for the pilot to interpret. There is only so much information that a navigation instrument needs to display: azimuth or directional information, and distance information. However, different instruments present these two pieces of information differently and result in different degrees of precision and efficiency as interpreted by the pilot. Cockpit information displays are examples of distributed representation systems. Navigational information in a cockpit information system can and is represented through a variety of isomorphic navigation instruments. Although these instruments are isomorphic and provide the same information, they vary in their relative degrees of directness and efficiency in their representation of scale information (Narens, 1981; Stevens, 1946; Zhang, 1995). The scale information of the orientation and distance dimensions in a cockpit information display is represented across internal and external representations and can dramatically affect the representational efficiency of the display and the navigator’s behavior (Zhang, 1997). This research examines the cognitive properties of the representations that such instruments produce. The specific assumption to be tested is that with the most direct system, scale information is maximally represented externally, resulting in higher efficiency, faster and more direct responses. Distributed representations External representations are the representations formed from information gathered from the external environment. External representations include physical objects and/or symbols, relations and constraints between physical objects and their configurations relative to each other, and external physical rules, such as laws of physics. Through the human perceptual processes, the information necessary to form external representations is picked up by the sensory and