Paul,
The word length effect has been used to demonstrate that one of the limits
on short-term capacity is temporal - you can only retain as much as you can
rehearse in (approximately I believe - the reference isn't right at hand) 2
seconds.
That said, we don't need to discard the idea of chunking - it is an
effective strategy for overcoming STM limits. Chase and Erikson's (1982)
subject, SF, was able to increase his digit span from the normal 7 to over
80 using a highly practiced form of chunking.
Hope that helps,
Larry
************************************************************
Larry Z. Daily
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Department of Psychology
White Hall, Room 213
Shepherd College
Shepherdstown, West Virginia 25443
phone: (304) 876-5297
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
WWW: http://webpages.shepherd.edu/LDAILY/index.html
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Paul Leiberton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 10:32 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Short term memory & chunking
>
>
> It is frequently stated in intro texts books that chunking can increase
> the capacity of STM.
>
> But isn't there research that would support the idea that th size of the
> item in STM affects the capacity of STM? While 7+/-2 works fine with
> numbers of one syllable, if the numbers given to a subject were longer
> (e.g., 178, 438, etc) what can be retained in STM drops.
>
> One of my high school students pointed this out to me after viewing a
> video that contained a filme clip of a subject demonstrating the effect of
> word length on STM capacity. He wondered if the notion of chunking should
> be discarded.
>
>
