Redundant Messages Research Articles

When “Not” is Not Bad: A Re-Evaluation of the Use of Negatives

Previous literature has consistently shown that affirmative messages are understood more quickly and accurately than negative messages and that redundancy facilitates comprehension and response selection. However, it was unclear which of these two variables is the most important in the design of system-status messages that must be understood and acted upon. In our experiment, we compared affirmative and negative system-status messages when negative messages contained a word redundant with the appropriate action. The results indicated that affirmative messages were responded to more quickly and more accurately than negative messages only when the negative messages did not contain a redundant word. Redundant negative messages were more accurate than affirmative non-redundant messages.

Unsupervised Learning

What use can the brain make of the massive flow of sensory information that occurs without any associated rewards or punishments? This question is reviewed in the light of connectionist models of unsupervised learning and some older ideas, namely the cognitive maps and working models of Tolman and Craik, and the idea that redundancy is important for understanding perception (Attneave 1954), the physiology of sensory pathways (Barlow 1959), and pattern recognition (Watanabe 1960). It is argued that (1) The redundancy of sensory messages provides the knowledge incorporated in the maps or models. (2) Some of this knowledge can be obtained by observations of mean, variance, and covariance of sensory messages, and perhaps also by a method called “minimum entropy coding.” (3) Such knowledge may be incorporated in a model of “what usually happens” with which incoming messages are automatically compared, enabling unexpected discrepancies to be immediately identified. (4) Knowledge of the sort incorporated into such a filter is a necessary prerequisite of ordinary learning, and a representation whose elements are independent makes it possible to form associations with logical functions of the elements, not just with the elements themselves.

Resolution of deadlocks in object-oriented distributed systems

The authors propose and prove a distributed algorithm for detection and resolution of resource deadlocks in object-oriented distributed systems. In particular, the algorithm can be used in conjunction with concurrency control algorithms which are based on the semantic lock model. The algorithm greatly reduces message traffic by properly identifying and eliminating redundant messages. It is shown that both its worst and average time complexities are O(n*e), where n is the number of nodes and e is the number of edges in the waits-for graph. After deadlock resolution, the algorithm leaves information in the system concerning dependence relations of currently running transactions. This information will preclude the wasteful retransmission of messages and reduce the delay in detecting future deadlocks.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

The development of referential communication: speaking to different listeners.

Referential communication can be conceptualized as consisting of substantive knowledge, enabling skills, and procedural rule knowledge. One type of procedural rule is to tailor a message to the needs of one's listener. 2 studies investigated whether children vary the amount of information in a message (contrastive or redundant) as a function of either sharing a previous experience with that listener or the age of the listener. First- (M = 6-8), fourth- (M = 9-9), and fifth- (M = 10-8) grade speakers played a referential communication game with a fictitious listener. All children were more likely to give redundant messages to listeners with whom they had no common shared experience or to strangers than to listeners with whom they had shared a previous experience. Only the older children, however, varied the type of redundant messages in keeping with the needs of the listeners. Furthermore, the older children were more likely to vary how much information they included in their messages as a function of the listener's age. Discussion focuses on the need to consider the acquisition of communicative competence as the acquisition of specific skills within the context of specific tasks.

The effect of redundant cues on comprehension of spoken messages by aphasic adults

Aphasic adults with severe auditory comprehension impairment responded to redundant and nonredundant spoken and/or gestured messages by pointing to pictures. Messages of two types (pantomime and emblem) were presented under four conditions (spoken message alone, spoken message repeated, gestured message alone, and spoken message plus redundant gesture). Though spoken messages repeated and spoken messages with gestures were comprehended significantly more often than gestures alone, neither of these stimulus conditions was reliably superior to spoken messages alone. This finding casts doubt on the clinical strategy of supplementing spoken messages with redundant gestures when auditory comprehension is severely impaired, and raises questions about the ability of severely aphasic individuals to utilize semantically redundant message content. Pantomimes were consistently comprehended more frequently than emblems, regardless of stimulus condition. This finding was attributed to a depictability factor: the pictures associated with pantomimes were relatively direct representations of item content, while those associated with emblems were necessarily less direct representations. For this group of subjects, whose range of comprehension deficit was deliberately restricted, neither auditory nor reading comprehension at the single-word level was found to correlate with comprehension of symbolic gestures.

Effects of message redundancy on the calculations of speech intelligibility

The articulation index methods used today assume that the distribution over frequency of the usable information content of speech does not depend on various sequential or contextual constraints existing in the message. This assumption has repeatedly been shown to be inaccurate, but the suggested alternative approaches reduce the generality of the theory. They require a separate frequency importance function for each degree of redundancy. In this study, the frequency importance function for the material of average everyday redundancy is derived. The function is flat on the Bark scale. This suggests that the speech code is optimally matched to the receiver (auditory system). The optimization refers to maximizing the reception rate of information.

Brain window language of fireflies

Before mating female fireflies of the species Photuris versicolor respond to the courtship flashes of conspecific males. After mating they become femme fatales (FFs) by answering the courtship flashes of males of other species. By analyzing the responses of females to artificial stimulus flashes we have identified the language of the firefly, based on brain windows and on biological oscillators with a period of about 2 seconds. The response latency of the famale is a function of the stimulus interval, and these stimulus-response relationships form six clusters or “dialogs”. Each dialog is composed of a narrow range of stimulus intervals and their associated narrow range of response latencies. These dialogs are related to the three response behaviors of females: responses to the short stimulus intervals of conspecific males and responses to medium and long stimulus intervals of heterospecific males. These interval classes are named courtship, mimicry and patrolling respectively. Each behavior uses one receive brain window and one send brain window. The receive window is a time interval during which a female will only accept the stimulus flash. The send window is a time interval during which the female can only initiate a response. Similar stimuli can produce different latencies depending on the context stored in the females' memory. This context or expectation is defined by the past history of stimulation. The context is used to dynamically adjust the brain windows depending upon the behavior. The six dialogs together form the brain window language of the firefly. The language is defined in terms of message quantum, distance and redundancy. The message quantum is the smallest item used in coding and it is a fraction of the biological oscillator period. The coding distance is a measure of how far the receive windows are separated from each other and determines the safety of coding. The coding distance measured in message quanta is large for courtship and small for mimicry communication. Language redundancy shows the efficiency of coding and it is greater than one. A computer model has been developed that uses the brain window language. The model is in excellent agreement with the experimental data.

Development of referential communication skills: How familiarity with a listener affects a speaker's production of redundant messages.

In order to be an effective verbal communicator, one needs to give messages that reflect the demands of the task and the needs of one's listener. This study investigated developmentally how sensitive speakers are to the needs of their listeners. Of interest was whether children vary their production of redundant messages (saying more than the minimal necessary to be informative) as a function of sharing common experiences with a listener. First- and fourth-grade speakers gave messages to a fictitious listener (represented by a drawing) who was supposed to be either a stranger or a friend. Both first and fourth graders were more likely to give redundant messages to an unfamiliar listener than to one with whom they shared common experiences. Fourth graders, however, gave a different type of redundant message, one more sensitive to a listener's needs. Fourth graders included several differentiating features in their messages, whereas first graders included both differentiating and nondifferentiating features. Discussion focuses on the development of verbal communicative skills and how studying the production and comprehension of different types of informative messages can increase our understanding of communicative development. To become competent users of language, we need to develop a means of effectively verbally communicating our ideas and needs. Although most researchers agree that communicative skills evolve and change with development, there is controversy over how best to conceptualize the development of communication and what is the nature and type of changes that occur (e.g., Shatz, 1983; Whitehurst& Sonnenschein, 1985).

The flooding sink — a new approach to local area networking

A new local area networking technology is presented. The approach is based on an old routing algorithm called flooding — forward messages to all neighbouring nodes. The problem with this algorithm is that the network is deluged with duplicate messaes. The solution is a simple device which uses local memory to detect and ignore redundant messages, thus also acting as a message sink. Networks based on this device can be more flexible and reliable than current networks. Flooding also has the advantage that any messages lost due to transmission errors are quickly replaced by one of the copies. This can make low-level protocols unnecessary. When the low-level protocols are omitted, significant performance improvements are achieved. Simulation results are presented which show that this flooding technology can perform better than current CSMA and ring technologies.

Development of referential communication skills: How familiarity with a listener affects a speaker's production of redundant messages.

Development of referential communication skills: How familiarity with a listener affects a speaker's production of redundant messages.

Concurrent Broadcast for Information Dissemination

Concurrent broadcast involves the dissemination of a database, consisting of messages initially distributed among the nodes of a network, so that a copy of the entire database eventually resides at each node. One application is the dissemination of network status information for adaptive routing in a communications network. This paper examines the time complexity and communication complexity of several distributed procedures for concurrent broadcast. The procedures do not use information depending on the network topology. The worst-case time complexity of a flooding procedure for concurrent broadcast is shown to be linear in the number of nodes plus the number of messages, and no other procedure for concurrent broadcast has a better worst-case time complexity. A variant of flooding is proposed to eliminate redundant message receipts from the flooding process by real-time signaling between neighbors concerning messages residing at each. This variant can reduce communication complexity, while having a worst-case time complexity similar in form to that of the flooding procedure. Special properties of concurrent broadcast in a tree are also given. The present time complexity results can be used to bound the time during which inconsistent databases may reside at different nodes, to evaluate and compare procedures for (or including) concurrent broadcast, and to schedule a sequence of instances of concurrent broadcast so that the instances do not overlap and there is no need for sequence numbers.

The development of referential communication skills: Some situations in which speakers give redundant messages

Although theorists disagree as to the source of young children's communicative deficits, there is general agreement about there being a developmental increase in the production of informative communications. However, researchers typically have not studied different types of informative messages but have treated what is a category of message types as if it were one type. The problems in doing this become apparent when one considers research on listening skills which indicates that different types of informative messages are effective in different situations. Comparable findings might occur with speaking skills. That is, speakers might vary the type of informative message to be congruent with situational demands. These two studies investigated developmental and contextual changes in the production of redundant messages (including more than the minimal necessary to be informative) a type often used by speakers. First-and fifth-graders in Experiment I described one of several groups of pictures so that a fictitious peer listener would be able to select it. Of interest were the type of redundancy used and whether usage differed as a function of various task factors known to affect listening performance. The data indicated that fifth-graders, but not first-graders, use verbal redundancy in a manner indicating their sensitivity to various task demands. The data from Experiment II suggest that first-graders fail to give redundant messages because they do not realize that redundancy, in certain cases, will help their listeners. Discussion focuses on the importance of considering different types of informative messages within the context of specific task demands.

The effects of redundant communications on the behavior of listeners: Does a picture need a thousand words?

Using a referential communication paradigm, two types of, informative messages, contrastive and redundant, were compared developmentally in terms of their relative effects on the accuracy of listeners' responses as a function of task variables. Contrastive messages contained the minimal information necessary to distinguish a referent from a nonreferent. Redundant messages contained additional information. We predicted that redundant messages would be more effective than contrastive ones when the stimulus array was too complex for a listener to notice all aspects of it in the allotted time. Also manipulated were the order of presentation of the message and array and the delay between the two in order to determine how these factors would contribute to task complexity. Subjects were first-and third-graders and college students. The stimuli were drawings of cartoonlike figures. The results confirmed our predictions for the older subjects but not for the younger ones. The discussion of the data centered on why the picture-message sequence, was a more difficult sequence than the message-picture one for all age groups.

Learning to Communicate from Models: Children Confuse Length with Information

WHITEHURST, GROvER J.; SONNENSCHEIN, SUSAN; and IANFOLLA, B. J. Learning to Communicate from Models: Children Confuse Length with Information. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 507-513. Young children tend to become more redundant and informative speakers after listening to nonredundant and informative speakers. This research investigated whether this is due to the child minimizing effort by producing easier redundant messages, or whether it is due to the child's equation of longer messages with better messages through failure to discriminate the informativeness of messages. 6 modeling conditions involved orthogonal manipulations of the length and informativeness of the messages to which children responded as listeners. Later in the speaker's role, children who had heard long messages improved their communication accuracy (compared to a no-model control), while children who had heard short messages showed no change. No effect of message quality was observed: A model using uninformative long messages caused the child to improve as much as a model using informative long messages. 5-yearolds are sensitive to the length but not to the informativeness of the messages they hear.

メッセージの冗長度に及ぼす身元指定教示, 刺激図形配列, 及び臨界特徴数の効果

メッセージの冗長度に及ぼす身元指定教示, 刺激図形配列, 及び臨界特徴数の効果

メッセージの冗長度に及ぼす伝達媒体, 補助情報, および刺激特性の効果

This experiment was designed to examine the minimal redundancy hypothesis proposed by Olson, end further to decide the limit of the hypothesis. The experiment was run in a two-person communication situation. The task was for a sender of message to describe the referent so that the receiver could select it among figures in a stimulus-set. The results were: (1) Overall redundancy was considerably low. (2) Subsidiary information decreased the redundancy of message. (3) The less was the number of figures in a set, the less was the redundancy of message. These results were interpreted as evidence that suggests the necessity of cognitive factors in order to establish the generality of Olson's hypothesis.

Addition to 'The Existence of Good Cryptosystems for Key Rates Greater Than the Message Redundancy'

Three points related to a previous correspondence are reported here. Two new classes of cryptosystems are shown to share the property of additive-like instantaneous block (ALIB) ciphers; namely, good cryptosystems exist for key rates greater than the message redundancy. Furthermore, the optimality of the independence of the key and the message in a cryptosystem is established.

The existence of good cryptosystems for key rates greater than the message redundancy (Corresp.)

A general result related to Shannon's "random" cipher result is presented. By using the Fano inequality it is shown that the average probability of correct decryptment of a message digit is bounded away from one when the key rate is greater than the message redundancy for a given class of cryptosystems.

The Development of Communication: Modeling and Contrast Failure

WmTEHURST, GROVER J., and MERKUR, ANITA E. The Development of Communication: Modeling and Contrast Failure. CmLD DEVELOPMENT, 1977, 48, 993-1001. The development of referential communication was studied with respect to 2 types of social modeling. In redundant modeling, children were exposed as listeners to an adult speaker's production of messages including more than the sufficient information to select a referent from an array of nonreferents. Other children listened to a contrastive model produce informative messages with no redundancies. Controls were not exposed to modeling. All children subsequently assumed the speaker's role. At the 5-year level both modeling procedures resulted in increases in redundant messages. At the 7-year level, redundant modeling was far superior to contrastive modeling in reducing incomplete messages, while contrastive modeling did not lead to any increase in communication effectiveness. At the 9-year level, incomplete responses were very low in all groups; subjects exposed to redundant modeling produced redundant messages, while contrastive modeling subjects produced contrastive messages. These results were predicated on a phenomenon called contrast failure: deficiency among younger children in comparing referents and nonreferents in order to isolate differentiating features. 5and 7-year-olds were better able to produce redundant messages because these communications are not dependent on a contrastive analysis of the referential field.

Central auditory imperception.

The development of clinically applicable techniques for the evaluation of hearing impairment caused by lesions of the central auditory pathways has increased clinical interest in the anatomy and physiology of these pathways. A conceptualization of present understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the central auditory pathways is presented. Clinical tests based on reduction of redundancy of the speech message, degradation of speech and binaural interations are presented. Specifically performance-intensity functions, filtered speech tests, competing message tests and time-compressed speech tests are presented with the emphasis on our experience with time-compressed speech tests. With proper use of these tests not only can central auditory impairments by detected, but brain stem lesions can be distinguished from cortical lesions.