Presentation
Is Shannon entropy the measure of human learning through repeating tasks?: An interview approach
SessionThursday Poster Session
DescriptionPsychomotor skills, which are goal-oriented physical movements requiring both cognitive and physical ability, are critical to complex tasks such as surgery. A critical challenge in training these skills is understanding how to measure learning. One proposed framework draws from Shannon’s information theory: as a skill is learned, the uncertainty (entropy) in how to perform it decreases, converging toward a correct strategy. This study examined whether people perceive learning in this way by testing their responses to scenario-based questions corresponding to the three mathematical axioms of entropy in a general and a psychomotor (surgical skill) context. Forty participants completed two consecutive interviews, including a general choice and psychomotor task interview. Across both contexts, participants most frequently violated the third axiom, while adherence to the first two was higher. Overall, although most participants did not intuitively follow all axioms, the fundamental understanding of learning a task may still be measurable through a process that reduces the solution space to a correct strategy. This framework may inform future human performance modeling methods that center around the transferability of strategies to complex psychomotor tasks.
Event Type
Poster
TimeThursday, October 22nd5:30pm - 6:30pm PDT
Location
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