Cognitive complexity


Cognitive complexity describes cognition along a simplicity-complexity axis. It is the subject of academic study in fields including personal construct psychology, organisational theory and human–computer interaction.

History

First proposed by James Bieri in 1955.

In artificial intelligence

In an attempt to explain how humans perceive relevance, cognitive complexity is defined as an extension of the notion of Kolmogorov complexity. It amounts to the length of the shortest description available to the observer.
Here is an example :
Individuating a particular Inuit woman among one hundred people is simpler in a village in Congo rather than in an Inuit village.
Cognitive complexity is related to probability : situations are cognitively improbable if they are simpler to describe than to generate.
Human individuals attach two complexity values to events:
To 'generate' an event such as an encounter with an Inuit woman in Congo, one must add up the complexity of each event in the causal chain that brought her there. The significant gap between both complexities makes the encounter improbable and thus narratable.

In computer science

In human–computer interaction, cognitive complexity distinguishes human factors from, for example, computational complexity.

In psychology

Cognitive complexity is a psychological characteristic or psychological variable that indicates how complex or simple is the frame and perceptual skill of a person.
A person who is measured high on cognitive complexity tends to perceive nuances and subtle differences which a person with a lower measure, indicating a less complex cognitive structure for the task or activity, does not.
It is used as part of one of the several variations of the viable non-empirical evaluation model GOMS ; in particular the GOMS/CCT methodology.
Cognitive complexity can have various meanings:
Related to cognitive complexity is the term behavioral complexity, used by some researchers in organizational studies, organizational culture and management.