Memory span

The span is the number of elements that compare a living being simultaneously pushed together or put in any logical relationship to each other. The larger the memory span or the immediate retention, the more complicated processes of thought are possible.

When speaking to a person a number of monosyllabic words before, eg " horse ", " dog", " cow ", " sheep ", etc. - each word only once and the next in the distance of one second - and asks the subject to be to repeat the words, then it turns out that an adult can memorize words, on average, seven ( 7 ± 2). (Miller, 1956) The result can always confirm, for example, the repetition of simple random numbers. The relationship between memory span, intelligence and short storage capacity or performance of working memory seems to exist regularly.

Overview

The memory span is low in small children, only two or three, and then grows in intelligent children at roughly every two years by one element. It was the psychologist Jean Piaget, who recognized the importance of memory span and who established the theory that the maturation of thinking in children is causally linked to the growth of the memory span. Gifted children have a memory span of five already at entry to school age.

The possibilities of the simultaneous processing of multiple elements can, however, also increase methodically. By incorporating multiple elements in an overall context they can be considered in an increased amount. So Establishes a test subject, the terms " horse ", " dog", " cow ", ... in the larger unit " farm ", then this serves as an extending support short-term memory. The terms can be viewed and analyzed together.

Such a formation of units of meaning, and ultimately of complexes, also forms the basis of higher mental processes. It is produced both a reduction of the information as well as a larger context sensing Direction views.

This basic way of processing information, referred to in some new-fangled way as chunking, not only outwardly to an apparent excess of Siebenerschwelle, but for recording and exploration of sprawling information structures.

Testing the memory span in different variants (eg playback of number sequences forward or backward or in the middle of a consecutive series of numbers out ) is for about 100 years an integral part of numerous intelligence tests.

A typical example of the formation of information units of seemingly unrelated characters far beyond the 7- threshold addition, among other things, the letters related Scripture as the basis of tests with number sequences, the use of memory techniques, which are assigned to pairs of numbers or number triples certain meanings.

The latter in particular may be quickly dismissed as a "trick", on closer inspection is such an application but exactly reproduced what ever happens at a higher level: the formation of meaningful -prone units to overcome the threshold of seven subunits. So precisely these techniques illustrate in miniature one of the basic functions of our thinking.

On the question of the extent to which such techniques always associated, however thereof to distinctive method of loci, so the spatial configuration information for better storage and processing, also already applied automatically at thought processes and to what extent a result of information acquisition and processing can optionally be supported, exist both among regular users of the method as well as among psychologists disagreements. Clearly structured studies in this field are still missing.