In cognitive psychology, chunking is a process by which individual pieces of an information set are broken down and then grouped together in a meaningful whole. The word chunking comes from a famous 1956 paper by George A. Miller, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information". For chunking as a method for solving division, see, Channel capacity,"Magic number seven," Increase of short-term memory, Chunking as the learning of long-term memory structures, CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (, Learn how and when to remove this template message, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information (1956), The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, "The Role of Chunking and Organization in The Process of Recall11The research reported herein was supported through the Cooperative Research Program of the Office of Education, U. S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare; Grant MH11236 from the National Institute of Mental Health, United States Public Health Service; and Grant GN 534.1 from the Office of Science Information Service, National Science Foundation, to the Computer and Information Science Research Center, The Ohio State University. The phenomenon of chunking as a memory mechanism is easily observed in the way individuals group numbers, and information, in the day-to-day life. ; and Ahmed (2005). Procedure – Miller conducted an experiment to examine participants’ short term memory by finding out how many chunks of information they can store and recall after a short period of time. Why Does the Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon Happen? ; Miyapuram, K.P. How Does the Recency Effect Influence Memory? 2001;24(1):87-114. doi:10.1017/s0140525x01003922. Miller GA. This page was last edited on 16 December 2020, at 18:33. The size of the chunks generally ranges anywhere from two to six items, but often differs based on language and culture. [1] The chunks by which the information is grouped is meant to improve short-term retention of the material, thus bypassing the limited capacity of working memory. Mille r’ s view emphasizes a type of strategic, goal-oriented chunking, where chunking is essentially re-coding of the information in a more efficient way . Chunks in motor learning are identified by pauses between successive actions in Terrace (2001). He also argued for an operational definition of chunks suggesting a distinction between the notions of input and output chunks from the ideas of short-term and long-term memory. Cognition: Theories and application (8th ed.). For example, a phone number sequence of 4-7-1-1-3-2-4 would be chunked into 471-1324. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The next time you are trying to remember items from a list, start by forming them into groups. [7] Therefore, when "chunking" is used as a strategy, one can expect a higher proportion of correct recalls. On the other hand, a hierarchical representation would have multiple levels of representation. If you are like most people, you probably were not able to remember those 10 random numbers after only looking at them for a second or two. Chunking as a method of learning can be applied in a number of contexts, and is not limited to learning verbal material. A later description of the research in The Brain-Targeted Teaching Model for 21st Century Schools (2012) states that SF later expanded his strategy by incorporating ages and years, but his chunks were always familiar, and thus allowed him to recall the to-be-remembered chunks more easily. Chunking refers to the process of taking individual pieces of information and grouping them into larger units. 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