CONCEPT OF NEGATIVE INFORMATION

Negative information concerns the introduction of confusion (which increases the number of alternatives under consideration) into the process of obtaining information in order to deduce the correct message from among a set of possible alternatives. This intuitive description can be represented by a graph theoretic interpretation. An analogy to the game of “twenty questions” is depicted in terms of standard binary trees. Normative theory imposes certain constraints on the corresponding path through the trees associated with the sequential process, in that each edge of the tree should correspond to the procurement of one bit of information. “Negative information occurs when there is a deviation from either the tree or path. A classification scheme is developed to distinguish 12 common instances associated with the concept”. Copyright © 1978 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.