310 Information Storage and Neural Control 



upon the relationship between the input code and performance. 

 They found that an inefficient or inadequate code can retard the 

 transmission of information in perceptual-motor performance. 

 Decoding time, therefore, can make a measurable difference in 

 information-processing rate. Coding, of course, is important in 

 the formation of concepts since this involves the classification of 

 various things under categories which ignore differences among 

 them and emphasize similarities. Brown and Lenneberg (14) found 

 that when subjects were asked to name colors as quickly as possible, 

 the average reaction time was shorter and the degree of agree- 

 ment among subjects was higher when there was a word which 

 described the color. When the color had no special name but 

 had to be called "greenish-yellow," or something like that, there 

 was hesitation and inconsistency. Their matrix of intercorrelations 

 yielded a general factor which they called codability. There is a 

 large literature on semantic problems of coding. 



The contributions of the learner to information processing are 

 both more familiar and less easy to distinguish from other functions 

 than the more peripheral processes. Some have tried to make 

 learning theory cover nearly all of psychology. There has been 

 much research on learning, but little strictly in terms of infor- 

 mation theory, in which it should be viewed as the associating 

 of two or more signals. 



Competing theories about the memory have been treated in 

 detail by other speakers in this symposium. Just how information 

 is stored over time, and how it is searched for, still is not known. 



Deciding 



Deciding, as we have said, goes on in each subsystem, as well 

 as at the system level. Much of psychology concerns choices and 

 judgments of various sorts — psychophysical judgments, sociometric 

 choices, economic and social decisions, and so forth. Recent work 

 in game theory, utility theory, statistical decision theory, and group 

 effects on judgments of their members is clarifying the processes 

 of complex decisions. In complex reaction-time experiments it is 

 possible to calculate accurately the amount of time which is added 

 to the response time when a choice of behaviors is involved. This 

 time falls to zero as the task is better practiced and the choice 

 becomes automatic (15). 



