Cognitive complexity describes

cognition Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

along a simplicity-complexity axis. It is the subject of academic study in fields including personal construct psychology,

organisational theory Organizational theory refers to the set of interrelated concepts that involve the sociological study of the structures and operations of formal social organizations. Organizational theory also attempts to explain how interrelated units of organiz ...

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''. For example, individuating a particular Inuit woman among one hundred people is simpler in a village in Congo than it is in an Inuit village. Cognitive complexity is related to probability (see Simplicity theory): situations are cognitively improbable if they are simpler to describe than to generate. Human individuals attach two complexity values to events: * description complexity (see above definition) * generation complexity: the size of the minimum set of parameter values that the 'world' (as imagined by the observer) needs to generate the event. 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 (hard to produce, easy to describe) makes the encounter improbable and thus narratable.

In computer science

In human–computer interaction, cognitive (or psychological) complexity distinguishes human factors (related to psychology and human cognition) from, for example,

computational complexity In computer science, the computational complexity or simply complexity of an algorithm is the amount of resources required to run it. Particular focus is given to computation time (generally measured by the number of needed elementary operations) ...

In psychology

Cognitive complexity is a

psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...

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 Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

complexity tends to perceive nuances and subtle differences which a person with a lower measure, indicating a less complex cognitive

structure A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

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 (goals, operators, methods, and selection rules); in particular the GOMS/CCT methodology. Cognitive complexity can have various meanings: * the number of mental structures we use, how abstract they are, and how elaborately they interact to shape our perceptions. * "an individual-difference variable associated with a broad range of communication skills and related abilities ... hichindexes the degree of differentiation, articulation, and integration within a cognitive system".

Related terms

Related to cognitive complexity is the term behavioral complexity, used by some researchers in organizational studies,

organizational culture Historically there have been differences among investigators regarding the definition of organizational culture. Edgar Schein, a leading researcher in this field, defined "organizational culture" as comprising a number of features, including a s ...

and management.See Robert Hooijberg, ''Behavioral complexity and managerial effectiveness: a new perspective on managerial leadership'', University of Michigan, 1992; Daniel R. Denison, Robert Hooijberg, Robert E. Quinn
Toward a theory of behavioral complexity in managerial leadership
University of Michigan, September 1993

References

External links

A tutorial on Simplicity Theory (Simplicity, Complexity, Unexpectedness, Cognition, Probability, Information)

COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY CLASSIFICATION OF FCATTEST ITEMS

Cognitive Complexity/Depth of Knowledge Rating

ANALYZING ORGANIZATIONS THROUGH COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cognitive Complexity Human communication Human–computer interaction Personality Industrial and organizational psychology Cognition