The full benefits of modern communication engineering will be realized only when we have enough quantitative knowledge of the transmission properties of the human communication channel to guide technological development. This deficiency is a limiting factor in the effort to achieve economy of transmission through more efficient use of the time and frequency dimensions in peace time telephony and television; it has also become of serious concern in our inability to extract adequate information from marginal signals in military applications. This paper uses concepts in information theory and psychophysics to provide a basis for the quantitative measurement of certain communication properties of the human being. Part 1 of the paper discusses testing techniques in which binary signals were used for measuring information transmitted over a human communication channel. Part 2 proposes a model of this channel for investigating the factors which influence this information rate. The model involves three parameters: the signal level, the noise level of the human circuits, and the discriminant level of the human circuits. Some illustrative experimental measurements of these parameters are included.
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Munson et al. (1954) studied this question.
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