DECODING AS A FUNCTION OF NUMBER OF BITS PER CHUNK

MILLER'S CODING PRINCIPLE STRESSES THE IMPORTANCE OF MAXIMIZING THE NUMBER OF BITS PER CHUNK. 2 EXPERIMENTS ON DECODING WERE CONDUCTED; THE SOURCE MESSAGE CONSISTED OF THE 1ST 13 LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET, AND IT WAS ENCODED WITH A MINIMUM-REDUNDANCY HUFFMAN CODE. EXP. I VARIED THE SIZE OF THE CODE ALPHABET (BINARY, TERNARY, QUARTERNARY, OR SEPTENARY) WHILE EXP. II VARIED THE STIMULUS-RESPONSE (S-R) COMPATIBILITY (NORMAL, REVERSED, OR RANDOM MAPPING OF CODE WORDS AND ALPHABETIC LETTERS). IN BOTH CASES S HAD TO DECODE THE MESSAGE BACK INTO ITS ORIGINAL FORM. MEAN NUMBER OF LETTERS DECODED PER TRIAL INCREASED WITH SIZE OF CODE ALPHABET AND SHOWED SOME S-R COMPATIBILITY EFFECTS. MILLER'S CODING PRINCIPLE WAS CLEARLY SUPPORTED, AND EVIDNCE WAS ADDUCED TO SUGGEST THAT IT NEED NOT CONTRAVENE HICK'S LAW. (19 REF.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1968 American Psychological Association.