Accessibility: A criterion for regularity and hierarchy in visual pattern codes (Q1176279)

The focus of this paper is the encoding of visual patterns. A geometrical figure can be given by prescribing the sequence of side lengths and exterior angles as the perimeter of the figure is traced. For an encoding to be useful it should be psychologically plausible as well as compact. This paper describes a set of rules for discerning patterns in such encodings that the authors claim to fulfil both these criteria. The essence of the authors' scheme is its dependence on what they call `` holographic regularity'' and accessibility. The rules for pattern generation that this leads to are, repetition as in \(aaaa\), symmetry as in \(abcpcba\) and interleaving as in \(abacadae\). Each of these patterns is such that they are built from repititions of the same pattern. The accessibility criterion requires one to use these pattern generators in a hierarchical way, so that blocks of code can be used in place of single elements. The requirement of accessibility reduces the possible patterns making finding the simplest expression of a code less computationally demanding.