Psychological Science

The Informational Basis of Motion Coherence

Abstract

Observers judged the motion coherence of randomdot cinematograms Theoretical models were developed for coherence matches between cinematograms constructed from different angle distributions Evidence is presented that coherence matches are made on the basis of the Shannon-Wiener information entropy We show how the formal structure of information theory may be used to predict perceived pattern goodness when the underlying distributions of pattern alternatives are implicit in the judgment task