Chunking (psychology)
Chunking is a psychological concept that refers to the brain's ability to enhance short-term memory by grouping individual pieces of information into larger, manageable units. This method is particularly effective because it allows individuals to remember information more efficiently, as humans generally find it challenging to retain more than five to nine discrete items at once. The technique was popularized by American psychologist George A. Miller in the 1950s, who identified the limitations of short-term memory and introduced the idea of chunking as a means to overcome these restrictions.
Chunking can be applied in various contexts, such as when memorizing phone numbers or organizing academic study materials. For example, phone numbers are often chunked into segments, making them easier to recall. Similarly, students can group related information, such as historical events or tasks in a grocery list, by common themes or categories to facilitate learning and retention. This cognitive strategy is not only valuable in educational settings but also in fields like marketing and computer programming, where presenting information in chunks can lead to improved user engagement and comprehension. Overall, chunking serves as a practical tool for enhancing memory and information processing in everyday life.
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Chunking (psychology)
Chunking is a concept in psychology related to how the brain processes short-term memory. Experts have determined that people can remember information better when it is combined in groups, or chunked, instead of being presented as individual pieces of information. A number of techniques can be used to put information into chunks that will increase the likelihood that the information will be remembered. People can be taught to use these techniques to help them remember important information when studying and in other situations. Those who prepare information, such as reports and visual media, can present the information in ways that make it easier for people to absorb. If the information is placed in chunks, it has a better chance of being remembered by its intended audience.
Background
American cognitive psychologist George A. Miller is credited with developing and naming the concept of chunking. Prior to Miller’s work in the 1950s, psychology was largely focused on how the brain affects behavior. Miller was the first to begin studying and understanding how the brain gathers, stores, finds, and uses information.
Miller had a special interest in how the brain collects and stores short-term memories. Short-term memories include things such as grocery lists, phone numbers, and the names of new acquaintances. As a result of his research, Miller proposed the idea that there are limits to how much information people can store in short-term memory. This creates a memory bottleneck that affects how much new information a person can retain at one time.
In 1956, he published a paper that has become one of the most frequently referenced papers in all of cognitive psychology. Miller’s The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two proposed that people can only efficiently process from five to nine pieces of information when they are exposed to them only once, or about seven pieces plus or minus two. There can be exceptions, but the majority of people will be able to retain no more than five to nine bits of new data at one time.
Miller looked for ways to get around the memory bottleneck created by too much new information. He suggested that the amount of information people can retain could be increased by chunking it. This could be done by combining smaller bits of data into larger chunks.
A common example of this is phone numbers. Contemporary phone numbers have ten digits. However, people rarely memorize them as ten single digits. Instead, they are chunked into two groups of three numbers and one group of four—such as 111-222-3333—or into two groups of three and two groups of two—such as 111-222-33-33. This chunking process makes it easier to remember the information.
Overview
Information can be chunked in a number of different ways to make it easier to store and retain. The techniques all center around one main principle: to limit the amount of information presented at one time to nine or fewer. There are various ways to effectively combine information to make it easier to remember.
The example of how people learn phone numbers demonstrates one way: combining unrelated bits of information into shorter, easier-to-retain units. Breaking the ten digits of a phone number into short groups turns them into three or four bits of information instead of ten and helps the memory process.
Chunking by patterns is another option. In the example of a phone number, area codes would be part of a pattern. Area codes are established by regions, and phone numbers in a particular region mostly share the same area code. This repetition will make those numbers a pattern that makes them even easier to retain. The same can be said of the next three digits in a phone number, also known as the prefix. These are also often assigned regionally and are, therefore, repeated information that is easier to remember. When a person is familiar with the area code and prefix, each set of three digits becomes a single unit. As a result, a phone number goes from being ten separate, unrelated bits of data to a maximum of six, well within the total amount Miller suggested could be easily retained.
Information can also be recombined into groups that help it make more sense. For example, a person given a list of tasks to complete might have an easier time remembering them all if they are grouped by the way they are done or where they are done. A person applying chunking to a grocery list might combine the items by the aisle in which they are found, for instance, while someone getting ready for a party might remember everything better if they are combined by types of tasks, such as cleaning, shopping, and setting up.
Chunking has many applications in everyday life. Students can use it to improve learning. The first step would be to determine the best way to chunk the information. This may involve creating chunks and then breaking those down into even smaller chunks. For example, a student in a history class might first chunk the information for a test into the related events, such as battles. Next, the student could break it down into relevant facts, such as dates, locations, and important people. Then, instead of having to try to store a huge amount of loosely related data, the student will store the information in smaller blocks that are easier for the brain to store and retrieve. Chunking remains valuable in the field of education through curriculum design techniques, study techniques, and language learning.
Chunking has other applications as well. Those who program content for computers, marketers, and anyone who produces content for the Internet or other multimedia sources can use chunking to their advantage. A computer programmer can set programs to auto-format information such as phone numbers, birthdates, and identification numbers into easier-to-recall forms. Developers use chunking principles to create more user-friendly interfaces or handle large data sets using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Marketers who want to share a great deal of information at once can combine the data so it does not provide more than nine new facts. Those who produce multimedia content can put related information together so that it is easier to retain. This can include using short paragraphs and ample amounts of white space to guide the viewer to break the information into manageable chunks.
Bibliography
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