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Memory: Chunking

Tanya Kim Mehra, A015116721023

BA+MA (Clinical Psychology) – Integrated, Amity Institute of Psychology & Allied

Sciences, Amity University Noida

PSYC153: Basic of Psychological Processes

Professor Dr Mohammad Imran

November 9, 2021
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Memory: Chunking

Aim

To Study the impact of chunking on immediate recall of list of numbers.

Introduction

Memory is defined as the processes which is used to acquire, store, retain, and later

retrieve information. It is based on three major mental processes of encoding, storage, and

retrieval of the memory. It is a hypothesized part of the brain where traces of information and

past experiences are stored.

When we learn about memory, it is necessary to know how memory is broken into

processes. It is broken down into three parts: encoding, storage and retrieval. Encoding is the

process of receiving, processing, and combing information. It allows information from the

outside world to reach our senses. In this first process we change the information, so that it

may put the memory into the encoding process. In the second process, the creation of a

permanent record of the encoded information takes place and we maintain the information

over periods of time. This process is called storage. In the final process, which is retrieval,

the calling back of the stored information in response to some activity or process happens.

The stage model of memory is a linear model of human memory. Our memories are

developed and processed for storage through a systematic network. There are three stages of

memory that describe the length of time that information remains available to us. According

to this approach, information begins in sensory memory, moves to short-term memory, and

finally moves to long-term memory. Although not all information makes it through all the

three stages, most of it is forgotten.

Sensory memory is a brief storage of information in humans where information is

momentarily registered until it is recognised or transferred to short-term memory. Most of

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this information does not receive attention and is lost. It has a large capacity but a very brief

duration. There are two types of sensory memory, as so far only these two have been studied

properly, which are iconic memory (visual memory) and echoic memory (auditory memory).

Iconic memory is the visual sensory memory register which stores visual images after its

stimulus has ceased (Pratte, 2018). While it may contain a huge capacity, it declines rapidly

(Sperling, 1960). The information generally disappears within half a second. Meanwhile,

echoic memory is the sensory memory for incoming auditory information. The information

which we hear enters our organs as sound waves. These are sensed by the ears’ hair cell and

processed afterward in the temporal lobe. The processing of echoic memories generally takes

2 to 3 seconds (Darwin, Turvey, & Crowder, 1972).

The second stage is short-term memory (STM), almost a large portion of information which

gets into sensory memory gets forgotten but the information we have paid attention to may

pass into short-term memory. Short-term memory is the place where small amounts of

information can be temporarily kept for more than a few seconds but usually for less than one

minute (Baddeley, Vallar, & Shallice, 1990). STM store has a duration of up to 30 seconds,

and most of the information is lost through decay or displacement. Working memory, a

component of short-term memory that is analogous to a mental workbench. Working memory

is not a store unlike STM but is a set of memory operation.

Long-term memory is the third stage. It has an unlimited capacity and duration and encodes

information semantically. Information from LTM (long-term memory) if needed can be

recalled back to STM. Only when information is given meaning, it is passed on to LTM.

Under long-term memory, declarative and procedural memory are present. Declarative

memory is the memory of information, general knowledge, data, and events. It is a

consciously aware memory. It is further divided into two types: semantic and episodic.
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Semantic memory contains general information and knowledge related to our world.

Meanwhile, episodic memory consists of our memories of personal experience and specific

events that have occurred in the past. The second type of long-term memory is procedural

memory, it is the memory of how to perform a task or skill, as we perform tasks without

giving much thought to them.

When it comes to enhancing one’s memory the most common method is the use of mnemonic

devices. A mnemonic is an instructional strategy designed to help people improve their

memory of important information. There are various types of mnemonic devices, the most

popular being chunking, keyword technique and loci mnemonic strategy.

Chunking: It is a strategy of taking long strings of information like numbers or letters

and combining several pieces of information into smaller, more manageable bits of

information.

 Acrostic method: It consists of a phrase in which the first letters in each words

represent another word.

 Acronym: It is an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words

and is pronounced as a word.

Keyword technique: In this strategy in which you create a visual image from what the

new word sounds like that reminds you of the meaning of the word. This technique is most

used when learning a new language.

Method of loci: In this strategy, the person pairs items to be remembered with specific

location.

As we already know by now, chunking is a short-term memory strategy taking long strings of

information like numbers or letters and grouping them into smaller, more manageable bits of

information. We have been using this technique since we were children without even been
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aware of it. For example, when we are in our early childhood period and our parents try to

make us remember their phone number, they will tell us to remember 3 numbers together

instead of remembering them individually. Let us take an imaginary number, 768945094,

when we start learning to remember this number, we will try to remember it by repeatedly

saying 76-89-45-094. But as times goes by, we will start remembering it as 7689-4509-4. So

as time goes by the size of the chunked data increases. When we chunk any information

which is hard to remember, it automatically becomes easier for us to recall it whenever

needed. Chunking hacks, the limits of our memory, it allows us to remember things for a

longer duration and lets us store information in long-term memory. Chunking is not a ‘cure-

all’ for memory issues, but it is effective in the improvement of our memory. By practicing

chunking methods regularly (in your studies, or any other mundane routine) you will be able

to notice that you are able to remember more information.

Review of Literature

Mathy, F., & Feldman, J. (2012). What’s magic about magic numbers? Chunking and

data compression in short-term memory. Cognition, 122, 346-362. This study proposes a new

more quantitatively precise conception of chunk derived from the notion of Kolmogorov

complexity1 and compressibility: a chunk is a unit in a maximally compressed code. The

authors present a series of experiment and show how information collection depends on the

length (distinct sequences). As they have wrote, Miller (1956) proposed that the capacity of

short-term memory is limited to a magic number seven (plus or minus two). And in recent

studies, the concept of working memory (Baddeley, 1986; Engle, 2002) has emerged to

account for a smaller magic number that Cowan (2001) estimated to be four (plus or minus

one) based on wide variety of data. They have also discussed that the centrality of
1
In algorithmic information theory (subfield of mathematics and computer science), the Kolmogorov
complexity of an object, such as a piece of text, is the length of a shortest computer program (in a
predetermined programming language) that produces the object as output.
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compression in working memory and have suggested that the size of a sequence after

compression determines how much space it occupies in memory. Which means that both

Miller’s magic number (seven, plus or minus two) and Cowan’s (four, plus or minus one) are

found to be correct according to the experiments conducted by them. As Miller’s magic

number refers to the number of digits in an uncompressed string, which when compressed

reduces to about four chunks. So, the study was concluded on showing that Cowan’s magic

numbers are more meaningful in limits, as it is the size after compression of information that

determines how much of it can really be stored.

Chekaf, M., Cowan, N., & Mathy, F. (2016). Chunk formation in immediate memory

and how it relates to data compression. Cognition, 155, 96-107. This paper underlines the

capacity of immediate memory to cope with new situations in relation to the compressibility

of information likely to allow the formation of chunks. During the tasks they conducted to

prove this, they explored the ability of untrained participants to increase their immediate

memory by showing sequences of objects into newly formed chunks. They have shown that

the recoding can occur very rapidly in immediate memory. They have concluded that

information can be compressed in a few seconds in the immediate memory by capitalizing on

the regularities within the materials presented. They believed that they had observed a

chunking process that seemed to result from the temporary creation of new representations.

They later concluded that immediate memory is the starting place for the reorganization of

information and how it is central in defining chunking.

Burtis, P.J. (1982). Capacity increase and chunking in the development of short-term

memory. Journal of experimental child psychology, 34 3, 387-413. This paper makes us

understand that the chunking hypothesis suggests that during the repeated exposure of

material, information can be organised into increasingly larger chunks. He discussed the
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possibility of an age-related increase in capacity of short-term memory store. Despite the

chunking being monitored and kept constant during the experiment, the different age of

people had different increase in their short-term memory performance. As chunking causes

task behaviour to improve over time, consistent with children’s performance. He suggested

that memory capacity is primarily determined by both the amount of information that is

stored and by vocabulary of the memory system.

Hypothesis

The number of trials taken for perfect recall of chunked list of digits will be less as

compared to digits presented without chunking.

Method

Subject Preliminaries

Name- Avy V.

Age- 20

Gender- Female

Education- BA, LLB(H)

Design

A within subject design was used for this experiment. This required using the same

participants for each condition – immediate recall of chunked numbers and those presented

without chunking. This allowed the responses from an individual on both conditions to be

compared. The subjects were presented the number lists alternatively- beginning with non-

chunked (A) and then chunked (B) and henceforth. The number of digits was increased in

subsequent trials from five upto twelve and trials were recorded for each condition, with the

maximum number of trials fixed at ten.

Material Required
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One set of chunked and non-chunked lists of digits, plain sheets.

Variable

Independent Variable: Presentation.

Dependent Variable: Average trials for correct recall.

Rapport Information

The Participant was made to sit comfortably. The participant was engaged in an

informal conversation to make them feel relaxed. Once it was ensured that they are

comfortable, the experiment was introduced. The instructions for the experiment were given

to the participant. The participant was assured that their results would be kept confidential

and not shared with anyone. If the participant had any query, it was addressed, and the

procedure was started.

Administration

Instructions

“I will read aloud a list of digits to you. You are required to recall back the digits to

me in the same order of presentation. Be loud and clear with you recall. The trials will

continue till you correctly recall all the items of the list in the order of their presentation. If

you have any query regarding the experiment, you can ask me without any hesitation.”

Procedure:

First of all, the participant was read out the digits without chunking. Then he was asked to

recall those items correctly in the order of their presentation. The recalls were recorded on the

data sheet with the symbols of right and wrong responses. The trials continued till the subject

correctly recalled all the digits read out in the order of their presentation. After that the

participants was read out a list of digits in chunked form and he was asked to recall digits

presented to him. In this way the process of demonstration of items and their recalls
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continued till the subject correctly recalled all the digits in the string. At the end, an

introspective report of the subject was recorded.

Introspective Report

“It was very exciting at first, I wanted to see how good of a score I could get. At first,

I thought that the numbers would be easy to remember and say but as the digits increased, I

had a hard time trying to keep myself from talking in between. Even when I was unable to

recall the numbers, it was fun and interesting.”

Observational Report

The subject was very excited in the beginning and was curious about what the results

would say. The subject was calm in the beginning but had trouble keeping herself calm when

the numbers of digits reached to 9. And had trouble recalling the right sequence of the digits

and kept on jumbling them. The subject listened carefully to all the instructions and the

experiment was carried out without any problems.

Result and Discussion

Trials

Stimulus 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1A ✓

1B ✓

2A ✓

2B ✓

3A ✓

3B ✓

4A ✓
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4B ✓

5A X ✓

5B ✓

6A X X X X X X X ✓

6B X ✓

7A X X X X X X X X X X

7B X ✓

8A X X X X X X X X X X

8B ✓

Table 1: The trials the subject went through and how many trials it took for them to say the

correct answer. (✓) said the digits correctly, (X) were not able to say it correctly. (A) is the

non-chunked sequence of digits and (B) is the chunked sequence of digits.

The aim of this experiment was to show the impact of chunking on immediate recall

of a list of numbers. As we look through the results on average, chunked form of digits took

less trials to get the correct sequence. AS for the non-chunked digits, the longer the number

of digits the harder it became for the subject to remember it in the correct sequence or to

remember it at all.

Condition Average

Non-Chunked (A) 4.25

Chunked (B) 1.25

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Table 2: Shows the average of trials it took to get the correct answers of non-chunked and

chunked form.

When we looked through the number of trials which were incorrect in chunked

sequences of number is far smaller than that of the non-chunked sequence. Meanwhile,

through the trials table (table 1) all the chunked sequences of digits have been said correctly

while two of the non-chunked sequences of digits were not able to be remembered within the

assigned number of trials. As chunking is a strategy of short-term memory, it is not unusual

to not remember the sequence of a large number and as it is repeated regularly, the chunked

number will be automatically stored in the long-term memory store. So, it can be seen

through the result of the experiment that the apparent span of recollection may be increased if

items can be chunked together into larger units instead of singular.

Conclusion

Chunking is defined as the process by which a large piece of information is divided into

smaller units, that is easier to retain and retrieve in short-term memory. During the repeated

exposure to the digits, information can be organised and remember for a short amount of time

making it easier for the person to get used to the next sequence. The non-chunked sequences

of digits which were being remembered as single digits were too much to be able to store in

short-term memory, as the connection between numbers is made by chunking them, it makes

it easier to remember and recall. As through the results, perfect recall of chunked lists of

digits are less in comparison to digits presented without chunking, it can be said without a

doubt that chunking helps a person memorise a piece of information more easily. But if the

information is larger, it will take a longer period to remember it properly and if the

information is smaller in size in can be transferred to long-term memory store and be

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remembered for a longer period. So, it can be concluded that chunking is an effective way to

increase the amount of information that you remember.

References

Chunking. (n.d.). In American Psychological Association (APA). American Psychological

Association. Retrieved November 6, 2021, from https://dictionary.apa.org/chunking

Mathy, F., & Feldman, J. (2012). What’s magic about magic numbers? Chunking and data

compression in short-term memory. Cognition, 122(3), 346–362.

http://bcl.unice.fr/membres/Fabien.Mathy/doc/MathyFeldman2012.pdf

Chekaf, M., Cowan, N., & Mathy, F. (2016). Chunk formation in immediate memory and

how it relates to data compression. Cognition, 155, 96–107.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.05.024

Burtis, P. (1982). Capacity increase and chunking in the development of short-term memory.

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 34(3), 387–413.

https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(82)90068-6

Wadsworth, W. (2021, August 1). What Is Chunking & How To Use This Powerful Memory

Strategy. Exam Study Expert. https://examstudyexpert.com/chunking-and-memory/

How the Chunking Technique Can Help Improve Your Memory. (2020, July 12). Verywell

Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/chunking-how-can-this-technique-improve-

your-memory-2794969#:%7E:text=Chunking%20refers%20to%20the%20process,of

%20information%20you%20can%20remember.&text=For%20example%2C%20a

%20phone%20number,be%20chunked%20into%20471%2D1324.

Chunking: Grouping Information So It’s Easier to Understand. (n.d.). Mind Tools.

https://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/Chunking.htm
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