Research on capacity - Span of memory and chunking

• Who conducted this research and when?


  Miller (1956)
• Procedure-

  Made observations of everday practice. For example he noted things come in sevens. Miller also noted that people can recall 5 words as well as they can recall 5 letters. (They do this by chunking)
• Findings-

  The span for capacity is about 7 items (7+-2)
• Strengths of the study-

  - Another strength of this study is that the findings are reliable. We can say this because several researchers have found the same as Jacobs, that is, the capacity of STM is around seven items of information

  - A strength of this study is that it was carried out in a very controlled way.It was a laboratory experiment and so the researcher had a high level of control over all variables
• Weaknesses of the study-