Model of Hierarchical Complexity - Overview

Overview

The model of hierarchical complexity (MHC), which has been presented as a formal theory, is a framework for scoring how complex a behavior is. Developed by Michael Lamport Commons, it quantifies the order of hierarchical complexity of a task based on mathematical principles of how the information is organized, and of information science. Its forerunner was the General Stage Model. It is a model in mathematical psychology.

Behaviors that may be scored include those of individual humans or their social groupings (e.g., organizations, governments, societies), animals, or machines. It enables scoring the hierarchical complexity of task accomplishment in any domain. It is based on the very simple notions that higher order task actions are a) defined in terms the next lower ones (creating hierarchy), b) they organize those actions c) in a non-arbitrary way (differentiating them from simple chains of behavior ensuring a match between the model-designated orders and the real world orders). It is cross-culturally and cross-species valid. The reason it applies cross-culturally is that the scoring is based on the mathematical complexity of the hierarchical organization of information. Scoring does not depend upon the content of the information (e.g., what is done, said, written, or analyzed) but upon how the information is organized.

The MHC is a non-mentalistic model of developmental stages. It specifies 15 orders of hierarchical complexity and their corresponding stages. It is different from previous proposals about developmental stage applied to humans. Instead of attributing behavioral changes across a person's age to the development of mental structures or schema, this model posits that task sequences of task behaviors form hierarchies that become increasingly complex. Because less complex tasks must be completed and practiced before more complex tasks can be acquired, this accounts for the developmental changes seen, for example, in individual persons' performance of complex tasks. (For example, a person cannot perform arithmetic until the numeral representations of numbers are learned. A person cannot operationally multiply the sums of numbers until addition is learned). Furthermore, previous theories of stage have confounded the stimulus and response in assessing stage by simply scoring responses and ignoring the task or stimulus.

The model of hierarchical complexity separates the task or stimulus from the performance. The participant's performance on a task of a given complexity represents the stage of developmental complexity.