This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A shape can be considered complex because it has many sides. A complex melody may feature varied pitches and rhythms.
Does the mind treat these as separate features, or can it recognize something common beneath their differences? For example, a 2017 study in PLOS Computational Biology suggested that people make sense of patterns by finding compact rules within them. The researchers found that people anticipated sequences of spatial locations using underlying regularities, such as symmetry and repetition.
However, new research suggests that we may be able to expand this understanding to identify an underlying shared quality in the complexity of unrelated things that we see, hear and touch. Tal Boger and Chaz Firestone of Johns Hopkins University explored that hypothesis in 11 experiments designed to reveal connections between diverse examples of complexity. The findings are published in Nature Human Behaviour.
Their findings point to a possible broad mental shortcut that may help humans navigate an information-heavy world. Boger and Firestone created a game in which participants chose one of two items to earn virtual coins. Some were rewarded for selecting the simpler option; others for selecting the more complex one.
The rules of the game were not disclosed. After multiple learning trials, the researchers changed the type of item. A player who had been trained using shapes might now choose between a single note and a sequence with varying pitches and tempos.
With no feedback on the new category, participants had to decide whether their earlier strategies to gain the most coins still applied. After playing both sections of the game, switching between shapes and sounds, about 72% of the 96 participants followed the learned rule, compared with the 50% expected by chance. The connection also extended to other experiments with unfamiliar letter strings, mathematical expressions, and colored dot arrays.
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