In cognitive psychology, chunking is a process by which individual pieces of
an information set are bound together into a meaningful whole.[1] The chunks
by which the information is grouped are meant to improve short-term retention
of the material, thus bypassing the limited capacity of working memory and
allowing the working memory to be more efficient. [2][3][4] A chunk is a
collection of basic units that have been grouped together and stored in a
person's memory. These chunks can be retrieved easily due to their coherent
grouping.[5] It is believed that individuals create higher-order cognitive
representations of the items within the chunk. The items are more easily
remembered as a group than as the individual items themselves. These chunks
can be highly subjective because they rely on an individual's perceptions and
past experiences, which are linked to the information set. The size of the
chunks generally ranges from two to six items but often differs based on
language and culture.[6]
According to Johnson (1970), there are four main concepts associated with the
memory process of chunking: chunk, memory code, decode and recode.[7] The
chunk, as mentioned prior, is a sequence of to-be-remembered information that
can be composed of adjacent terms. These items or information sets are to be
stored in the same memory code. The process of recording is where one learns
the code for a chunk, and decoding is when the code is translated into the
information that it represents.
The phenomenon of chunking as a memory mechanism is easily observed in the
way individuals group numbers, and information, in day-to-day life. For
example, when recalling a number such as 12101946, if numbers are grouped as
12, 10, and 1946, a mnemonic is created for this number as a month, day, and
year. It would be stored as December 10, 1946, instead of a string of
numbers. Similarly, another illustration of the limited capacity of working
memory as suggested by George Miller can be seen from the following example:
While recalling a mobile phone number such as 9849523450, we might break this
into 98 495 234 50. Thus, instead of remembering 10 separate digits that are
beyond the putative "seven plus-or-minus two" memory span, we are remembering
four groups of numbers.[8] An entire chunk can also be remembered simply by
storing the beginnings of a chunk in the working memory, resulting in the
long-term memory recovering the remainder of the chunk. [4]