Information: theory, brain, and behavior.
Information theory hands you a pocket ruler that measures stimulus control in exact bits.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Jensen et al. (2013) wrote a narrative review. They asked: can information theory give behavior analysts better rulers?
They mapped how bits, entropy, and mutual information can quantify the link between what we do, what we see, and what we get.
What they found
The paper says yes. Information metrics can turn messy stimulus-response streams into clean numbers.
Those numbers let you compare tight vs loose control across tasks, species, and labs.
How this fits with other research
Lalli et al. (1995) first pushed for cross-domain math in ABA. Jensen et al. (2013) picks up that torch and gives it a modern formula.
Hake (1982) begged for new basic measures to bridge lab and clinic. Information theory is the exact ruler F was missing.
Smit et al. (2019) wants one clear name for verbal operants. Jensen et al. (2013) wants one clear number for any operant. Both chase the same goal: less confusion, more precision.
Why it matters
Next time you graph a functional relation, add an information column. One bit score tells you instantly if your intervention tightened stimulus control. No new equipment needed—just count the bits.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
In the 65 years since its formal specification, information theory has become an established statistical paradigm, providing powerful tools for quantifying probabilistic relationships. Behavior analysis has begun to adopt these tools as a novel means of measuring the interrelations between behavior, stimuli, and contingent outcomes. This approach holds great promise for making more precise determinations about the causes of behavior and the forms in which conditioning may be encoded by organisms. In addition to providing an introduction to the basics of information theory, we review some of the ways that information theory has informed the studies of Pavlovian conditioning, operant conditioning, and behavioral neuroscience. In addition to enriching each of these empirical domains, information theory has the potential to act as a common statistical framework by which results from different domains may be integrated, compared, and ultimately unified.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2013 · doi:10.1002/jeab.49