Consciousness Lucky number #C-H-U-N-K-I-N-G
Scientist have struggled to understand why working memory seems to be able to hold onto a limited number of information at once. Today psychologist believe our working memory allows us to recall four chunks of information at a time, by taking individual units of information and grouping them into a whole unit. The application of chunking takes difficult to remember meaningless units, and creates a more meaningful unit as a whole making it memorable. In Daniel Bor’s book, The Ravenous Brain – How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning, he argues that chunking is a key aspect of human consciousness.
For instance you are studying for a history exam which requires you to remember events in chronological order. In this case you would apply chunking by creating an acronym by using the first letter of each individual event, and relating it to a previous schemes in your conscious. This will make it easier for your working memory to remember and the events will be easily recognizable. Therefore, “consciousness is initially necessary for complex learning, but then largely gets in the way of automatic processing”(155).
Miller’s theory suggest that our short term memory can hold around 7 items before we forget, which can vary based on demographics. He demonstrates that although chunking creates an abstract concept in the process of remembering, as the chucking appears to become more complex our conscious ability to retain information decreases. Since then his theory has been redefined we can recall about four chucks of information which approximately work out to be six letters, five one syllables words and seven digits.
It is safe to say that Miller’s commentary regarding retaining less information when complex chucking is presented is correlated to Bor's suggestion on how today’s key aspect human consciousness is the compression of data. As many studies have shown most of us are able to store only about four items in our short term memory but the larger way to past this limit is to use chunking.
The neurobiological concepts of chunking is based on breaking information into small pieces in order to enable increased retention. Miller and Bor both agree that this process can vastly increase the practical limits of working memory, however Bor explains that chunking is not just a servant to working memory but instead the main purpose of consciousness. Chunking plays a special role by detecting and encoring consistency between working memory and giving insight on understanding.
Bor, Daniel. The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning. New York: Basic, 2012. Print.
Jacobson, Roni. (2013, Sept 9). Seven Isn’t the Magic number for Short-Term Memory. The New York Times. Retrieved October 15, 2014.
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