Contrast Information Dynamics: A Novel Information Measure for Cognitive Modelling

Abstract

We present contrast information, a novel application of some specific cases of relative entropy, designed to be useful for the cognitive modelling of the sequential perception of continuous signals. We explain the relevance of entropy in the cognitive modelling of sequential phenomena such as music and language. Then, as a first step to demonstrating the utility of constrast information for this purpose, we empirically show that its discrete case correlates well with existing successful cognitive models in the literature. We explain some interesting properties of constrast information. Finally, we propose future work toward a cognitive architecture that uses it.

Keywords

• information dynamics
• cognitive modelling
• information theory
• information measure
• continuous systems
• coordinate invariance