assembling new chunks, 7±2
The author of my Psych of Personality text wrote that the purpose of education is not to teach new facts or concepts but to assemble new chunks.
Well, my eloquent first reaction to this was, “What??”
Your short term memory is where thinking takes place and where the ongoing understanding of reality is located. It holds the contents that comprise whatever you have in mind at the moment, whatever you’re conscious of at that particular time. The capacity of short-term memory is limited. Specifically, it’s 7 ± 2. Seven pieces of information that can be thought of as a unit-seven chunks of info on average. This would be why phone numbers are 7 digits long, and license plates are usually 7 or 8.
To quote the text:
“Research on short term memory suggests that right now you are conscious of no more than about 7 things - a surprisingly exact upper limit to the capacity of human awareness.”
If you know what Fisherian runaway is, for example, then compound ideas have become constrained within single chunks. This is important because if you can only think about seven things at a time, the more complex each chunk is in STM the more complex your thinking can be. Education can provide more and better chunks.
The idea of short term memory as consciousness is also kinda neat. Freud believed that consciousness was by the smallest part of the mind, and the cognitive model of personality parallels this with short term memory having the most limited capacity.
Moral of the story? Maybe Freud wasn’t such a crackpot after all.
*considers*
Nah.
Well, my eloquent first reaction to this was, “What??”
Your short term memory is where thinking takes place and where the ongoing understanding of reality is located. It holds the contents that comprise whatever you have in mind at the moment, whatever you’re conscious of at that particular time. The capacity of short-term memory is limited. Specifically, it’s 7 ± 2. Seven pieces of information that can be thought of as a unit-seven chunks of info on average. This would be why phone numbers are 7 digits long, and license plates are usually 7 or 8.
To quote the text:
“Research on short term memory suggests that right now you are conscious of no more than about 7 things - a surprisingly exact upper limit to the capacity of human awareness.”
If you know what Fisherian runaway is, for example, then compound ideas have become constrained within single chunks. This is important because if you can only think about seven things at a time, the more complex each chunk is in STM the more complex your thinking can be. Education can provide more and better chunks.
The idea of short term memory as consciousness is also kinda neat. Freud believed that consciousness was by the smallest part of the mind, and the cognitive model of personality parallels this with short term memory having the most limited capacity.
Moral of the story? Maybe Freud wasn’t such a crackpot after all.
*considers*
Nah.