Memory Chunking Research Paper

Effects of Chunking on Short Term Memory Recall

Jorick Bater, Jeremy Blaustein, Kelsey Towfiq, Matthew Moses

University of Southern California

Abstract Through this experiment, we tested how significant the effects of using the memory recall technique "chunking" (the grouping of items together) can have on an individual 's short term memory. The experiment was carried out by giving 24 people either a list of 15 random letters grouped into threes (to simulate "chunking") or a list of 15 random letters without any grouping, and the random letters were the same between the two groups. Each participant was given 20 seconds to memorize the lists, and then asked how many of the letters they could recall without looking at the

Chunking is often described as the organization of information into meaningful units thereby making it easier to remember (Gazzaniga, Heatherton, & Halpern, 2003). Often time this can be in the form of pairing objects into smaller groups or finding a way to categorize a large number of objects so it 's easier for the brain. The basis of this technique lies in the claim that humans can only memorize 7 things in their short-term memory. Thus through the chunking technique people can potentially increase the number of things they can remember, which can be useful in both professional or everyday settings. Although this technique has little effect on long-term memory recall, studies have shown that it can have significant impact on short-term memory recall. As discussed in Gazzaniga et al. (2003) the basis of this technique lies in the theory that people better organize groups as cognitive representations as opposed to individual items. However this technique 's effectiveness can be highly suggestive in that certain people may have different perceptions of the items presented to them and thus store them differently in the short-term memory. For the purposes of our study, 15 random non-repeating letters were grouped into three letter groups to simulate chunking. People were either given a sheet with that chunking structure or a sheet with each letter evenly spaced out. The independent variable for this experiment was whether or not chunking was part of the sheet. The dependent variable was the amount of words recalled. Our hypothesis stated that there 'd be a significant difference showing that people tested with the chunking sheet would recall more words than those with the normal