Chunking

Psychologists study memory and chunking because it is important for the survival of mankind. Without memory we would be unable to complete everyday cognitive tasks such as eating, speaking, walking, reasoning, or have an understanding of dangers or past experiences or learning.

Memory is a mental process where humans are able to remember past experiences. It consists of STM and LTM. Short term memory is when the brain obtains only a small amount of information whereas long-term memory is able to store more information for an extended period of time.

Chunking is when a person can take individual pieces of information and group them into sub units.

Ericsson, Chase and Faloon (1980) did an experiment on chunking. They had an undergraduate student memorize random strings of decimal digits an hour a day, 3 to 5 days a week, for more than a year and a half. At the end of this period his memory span had increased from 7 to 79 digits. In other words, he could repeat back a string of 79 random digits immediately after hearing it without any error. His long-term memory for the digits also improved.

The aim of this study was to see whether the memory technique ‘chunking’ would improve the amount of words recalled. The independent variable was whether the words in the grid were categorised or scattered while the dependent variable was the amount of words correctly recalled.

It was hypothesised that participants in the control group who were chunking the categorised words would be able to memorise more words compared to the experimental groups who were memorising scattered words.

METHOD

Participants

A conveniently sampled group of 14 male and female year 10 psychology students aged 15-16 years from TCC, America were used as participants. They were divided into 2 groups at random using the 1-2 method. There were 4 people with vision impairments.

Materials

1. Projector – used to project the words on the board for people to see

2. Word Document – used to show the words in grids

3. Laptop – contains the word document of words in grids

4. Whiteboard – to project the word document CLEARLY

5. Pen – to write down the words

6. Paper – to write on

Procedure

1. Researcher allocated the participants into 2 groups- either the control or experimental group using the 1-2 method at random.

2. Researcher instructed the experimental group to go outside and wait patiently sitting down.

3. Researcher instructed participants to sit down away from each other.

4. Researcher instructed part. to view the words on the board for 2 minutes.

5. R. I part. To write as any words as they could remember in 2 minutes.

6. R. I. parts. In control group to hide their paper and switch with the experiment group outside.

7. Researcher instructed participants to sit down away from each other.

8. Researcher instructed part. to view the words on the board for 2 minutes.

9. R. I part. To write as any words as they could remember in 2 minutes.

10. R. I. Parts. From outside to come inside and check how many words they correctly recalled.

11. Participants then shared the raw data with the researcher.

RESULTS

The control that used chunking had an average of 19 out of 25 words whereas the experimental group had an average of 15 out of 25 words.

DISCUSSION

It was hypothesised that participants in the control group who were chunking the categorised words would be able to memorise more words compared to the experimental group who would memorise scattered words.

The hypothesis of this investigation was supported by the results obtained. People in the experimental group who remembered scattered words achieved an average recall of 15 words out of the 25 provided whereas people in the control group who remembered categorised or “chunking” words achieved an average recall of 19 words out of 25. There is a difference of 4 words which is somewhat significant.

These