Used the term 'the magical number 7' to describe capacity of STM
Investigated chunking in STM
Did some research similar to that of Jacobs (1887)
Aim: To investigate the capacity of STM.
Method: Literature review of published investigations into perception and STM, from the 1930s to 1950s.
Results: This existing research suggested that organising stimulus input into a series of chunks enabled STM to cope with about seven "chunks", and this was why more than sevendigits, words or even musical notes could be remembered successfully.
When we try to remember a phone number, which has 11 digits, we chunk the information into groups, for example: 0767...819...45...34, so we only need to remember four chunks of information and not 11 individual digits.
Conclusion: Organisation (or 'encoding') can extend the capacity of STM and enable more information to be stored there, albeit briefly.
Miller (1956) found that after reviewing psychological research (meta-analysis) the average digit span was 7, plus or minus 2. Therefore, the CAPACITY of our STM is 7 +/- 2 items, according to Miller.
