Let's Explore our Memory: Organization and Chunking

In our previous blog-isode on The depth of processing, I emphasized on the importance of meaning for a much better result at remembering.

Source

Another perspective of this hypothesis (Depth of Processing) places emphasizes on organization. We've already discussed the significance of organization in previous blog-isodes when we talked about chunking. Additional support comes from various findings that provide more details about the chunking and organizational process. Chunks, like the first nine squares, acronyms such as FBI, and English words, which we looked at, are drawn from the subject's previous experiences; all he or she has to do is recognize them.

However, the subject will frequently not be fortunate enough to have all the information neatly pre-chunked; if he wants to recall things well, he will need to do part of the chunking himself.

One experiment provides strong evidence for the effectiveness of "recoding" in forming new and larger chunks, increasing our usual ability for a specific memory task.

In this study, the subject was a college student who spent about 230 hours trying to become skilled at remembering strings of numbers. In each session, he listened to random numbers presented one per second and then tried to remember the sequence. If he got it right, the sequence was made longer by adding one more digit; if he got it wrong, it was shortened by removing one digit. After more than twenty months of this, the person's ability to remember digits had increased significantly: starting from seven(7), it reached almost eighty(80).

Fascinated?

What happened was that the person had figured out how to break down the digit sequences into meaningful parts, making larger chunks. He was a long-distance runner participating in major athletic events. This led him to represent three- and four-digit groups as running times for various races (e.g., 3492 became "3 minutes 49 point 2 seconds, near world record time"), a technique complemented with ages (893 became "89 point 3, very old man") and dates (1944 was "near end of World War II"). These number sequences obviously became grouped chunks in memory. You could tell whiles when the person was recalling – almost all of his pauses happened between the groups.

Now, with the example I just provided, I bet you can recall the digits without rereading.

Try it before scrolling back up to check. Let me know in the comment section if you succeeded.

You see, chunking, is a method of connecting incoming items to each other, making them easier to remember. However, these connections might go unnoticed unless we can link the information to something we already knew before the new information. This kind of organization can assist us in understanding what we hear or see, which then significantly influences later recall.

Alright, before we proceed, let's try out this game:

How were your results? Let me know in the comments below.

In one very popular experiment, which I believe some of you might have read about, two groups of participants were given a recorded passage and were instructed to understand and remember it. The passage read as follows:

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups depending on their makeup. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do . If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo any particular endeavor. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many . In the short run this may not seem important, but complications from doing too many can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. The manipulation of the appropriate mechanisms should be self-explanatory , and we need not dwell on it here . At first, the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell.

Both groups of participants listened to the same passage and were treated the same way, except for one difference. One group heard the passage without any additional information about its content. The other group was told before listening: "The paragraph you will hear will be about washing clothes."

As expected, the two groups showed significant differences in both comprehension and overall recall tests (total number of ideas in the paragraph). When they were aware that the sentences were about washing, they could connect the content to their existing knowledge. This meaningful encoding positively influenced later recall.

The Bus Stops Here for today:

I hope you enjoyed today's blog-isode! In tomorrow's episode, we'll discuss mnemonics and their role in recall. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic or my blogs. As always, I find joy in creating this content, and I want to ensure you enjoy reading it. Until tomorrow, stay safe.