University College London, London, England.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2010 Oct;17(5):624-9. doi: 10.3758/PBR.17.5.624.
Accounts of subjective randomness suggest that people consider a stimulus random when they cannot detect any regularities characterizing the structure of that stimulus. We explored the possibility that the regularities people detect are shaped by the statistics of their natural environment. We did this by testing the hypothesis that people's perception of randomness in two-dimensional binary arrays (images with two levels of intensity) is inversely related to the probability with which the array's pattern would be encountered in nature. We estimated natural scene probabilities for small binary arrays by tabulating the frequencies with which each pattern of cell values appears. We then conducted an experiment in which we collected human randomness judgments. The results show an inverse relationship between people's perceived randomness of an array pattern and the probability of the pattern appearing in nature.
对主观随机性的描述表明，当人们无法察觉到描述刺激结构的任何规律时，他们会认为这个刺激是随机的。我们探索了这样一种可能性，即人们所察觉到的规律是由他们自然环境的统计数据所塑造的。我们通过测试以下假设来做到这一点，即人们对二维二进制数组（具有两种强度级别的图像）的随机性的感知与该数组的模式在自然界中出现的概率成反比。我们通过统计每个细胞值模式出现的频率来估计小的二进制数组的自然场景概率。然后，我们进行了一项实验，在实验中我们收集了人类对随机性的判断。结果表明，人们对数组模式的感知随机性与该模式在自然界中出现的概率之间存在反比关系。
