ABSTRACT
The information capacity of the motor system is specified by its ability to produce consistently one class of movement from among several alternative movement classes. This chapter explores the metaphor that the human information-processing system is a kind of communication channel that can be described using information theory. An introduction to information theory starts with another simple task, choice reaction time. A control theory analysis is able to model movement time with the same accuracy as information theory. Control theory allows predictions about the space-time properties of movements that cannot be addressed using information statistics. In the decades since P. M. Fitts’ original publication, his relationship, or “law,” has proven one of the most robust, highly cited, and widely adopted models to emerge from experimental psychology. Fitts was able to link the speed—accuracy trade-off, observed for continuous movements, with the speed—accuracy trade-off in choice reaction time tasks by using the information statistic.
