Preferences for rates of information presented by sequences of tones.

Abstract

This study tests the hypothesis that an organism is an information processing system with a preferred rate of processing information. Information - H = [long dash]p log p. Ss rated the pleasantness of sequences of tones that sounded like simple music and presented H at rates varying from 0.0 to 32.0 bits/sec. The specific hypotheses are (a) pleasantness ratings of tone sequences increase up to a preferred rate and then decrease at high rates, (b) ratings are solely a function of the rate the tone sequences present H. The ratings were found to be an increasing monotonic function of H; there was no evidence of a decline in pleasantness ratings at high H values. The ratings were not solely a function of rate (bits/sec), but also varied with the sequence''s speed (tones/sec). The results were interpreted as disconfirming the hypotheses. The failure was attributed to the fact that H does not reflect the magnitude of successive stimulus differences and thus is an inadequate measure of perceptual variation.