The aim of the investigation was to repeat the experiment carried out by Bower and Springston in 1970. A laboratory experiment was carried out to demonstrate how chunking could be used to increase the capacity of STM.
Summary
The aim of the investigation was to repeat the experiment carried out by Bower and Springston in 1970. A laboratory experiment was carried out to demonstrate how chunking could be used to increase the capacity of STM. Participants were presented with a letter sequence. The independent variable was the chunking and the dependent variable was how many letters the participants recalled. A repeated measures design was used and the participants were an opportunist sample of 20 students, between the ages of 16-18 years. The results were analysed using the Wilcoxon test.
Therefore the directional hypothesis that the participants remembered more of the acronyms than the non-related trigrams is significant. The graphs and the results extended this by showing that more acronyms were remembered than the non-related.
Introduction
Memory is the process of storing information and experiences for possible retrieval at
some point in the future. This ability to create and retrieve memories is fundamental to
all aspects of cognition and in a broader sense it is essential to our ability to function
properly as human beings. Our memories allow us to store information about the world
so that we can understand and deal with future situations on the basis of past
experience. The process of thinking and problem solving relies heavily on the use of
previous experience and memory also makes it possible for us to acquire language and
to communicate with others. Memory also plays a basic part in the process of
perception, since we can only make sense of our perceptual input by referring to our
store of previous experiences. Even our social interactions with others are dependent
upon what we remember. In a sense it can be said that our identity relies on an intact memory, and the ability to remember who we are and the things that we have done. Almost everything we do depends on our ability to remember the past.
Definitions of ‘Short term Memory’ vary between researchers. Typically this means memory for what has happened in about the last 20 seconds or less. Short term memory has a fairly small capacity. The figure normally quoted is that if we are given a list of words or numbers, then most people can remember somewhere between five and nine items. Miller (1956) coined the phrase the magical number seven plus or minus two to denote what people typically remember. There are ways of increasing how much can be remembered and Miller argued the ‘each item a person could remember consisted of a chunk of information. For example, consider the list ‘2014266977’. If one were attempting to remember this list simply as a set of individual numbers, then it would probably be beyond one’s memory span. However, suppose one recognised the numbers not as ten separate items to be remembered, but as two separate items (20142 was one such number and 66977 the other). This is an example of forming chunks – grouping items to be remembered into a smaller set of bigger items, which one finds easy to remember. This capacity for remembering can be taken to impressive lengths.
Ericsson et al. (1980) were interested in magic number 7 and worked with a participant (along distance runner), who had a normal memory span and average intelligence for an undergraduate. For 20 months he spend three to five hours a week on memory span tasks involving digits. By devising a strategy of recoding these in
to running times, he could store lists of 12 digits as chunks of four digits each (for example, 3:49.2’near world record mile time’). He supplemented this with ages (89.3’very old man’) and dates (1944 ‘near the end of World WarII’). Using this system his memory span increased from seven to 28 digits. Then he organised the chunks into a hierarchy of ‘groups’ and ‘super groups’, until eventually he could retrieve an average of almost 80 digits. However, when tested on consonants his memory span reverted to about six items. It seems he was unable to increase his Short term Memory capacity through practice; his increase in digit span was due to the mnemonic associations. Thus, by chunking, the amount, which can be held in memory, can be increased.
Chaining material to be learned into narrative stories can also help remembering. Bower and Clark (1969) asked participants to make stories from lists of ten unrelated nouns. Subsequently, 93% showed correct recall, compared to only 13% for control participants who were asked to create stories but who had spent the time studying the lists. Another study by Bower and Springston, to demonstrate how chunking could be used to increase the capacity of Short term Memory. Participants were presented with a letter sequence. Letters were presented in a way that formed a well-known group (eg, fbi, PhD, IBM), and then the letters were presented in a way that did not form a well-known group (eg fb, iph, mr). Participants were then asked to recall as many of these letters as they could. Participants who were presented letters with a well-known group recalled more than the other letters that did not form a well-known group. It is this experiment by Bower and Springston which is most relevant to this study as the study hopes to investigate whether Chunking could be used to increase the capacity of Short term Memory.
