William Edmund Hick

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William Edmund Hick (born August 1, 1912 , † December 20, 1974 ) was a British physician and pioneer of the newly emerging sciences experimental psychology and ergonomics .

Life

Hick studied medicine at the University of Durham , graduated in 1938 and earned his doctorate there in 1949 . From 1941 to 1944 Hick was in the Royal Army Medical Corps, then he went to the University of Cambridge and worked there for the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit , the cognitive science department of the Medical Research Council .

In 1953, Hick was appointed professor and was a fellow of St John's College . He was a founding member and 1958 President of the Experimental Psychology Society . He was a founding member of the Ergonomics Society and the Ratio Club , an informal group to which u. a. and Alan Turing , W. Ross Ashby , William Gray Walter and WAH Rushton belonged to themes of cybernetics to discuss.

power

His best-known discovery is Hick's law (1952), also known as Hick- Hyman's law, which describes the relationship between reaction time and the number of options.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ WE Hick (1952). On the rate of gain of information . Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 4, pp. 11-26

literature

  • Hick, WE and Bates, JAV (1949). The Human Operator of Control Mechanisms . Inter-departmental Technical Committee on Servo Mechanisms, Great Britain, Shell Mex House, p. 37
  • AT Welford (1975). Obituary: William Edmund Hick . Ergonomics Vol. 18, 2, pp. 251-252
  • Longstreth, LE, El-Zahhar, N., & Alcorn, MB (1985). Exceptions to Hick's law: Explorations with a response duration measure . Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 114, pp. 417-434
  • AR Jensen . (1987). Individual differences in the Hick paradigm . In: Speed ​​of information-processing and intelligence. Vernon, PA, et al., Norwood, NJ, USA, Ablex Publishing Corp, pp. 101-175
  • IJ Deary, G. Der and G. Ford (2001). Reaction times and intelligence differences: A population-based cohort study . Intelligence (Journal), Vol. 29, pp. 389-399

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hick, William Edmund
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British cognitive scientist
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1912
DATE OF DEATH 20th December 1974