Let us begin with some information from Wikipedia:
In cognitive psychology, chunking is a process by which individual pieces of an information set are broken down and then grouped together. A chunk is a collection of basic familiar units that have been grouped together and stored in a person's memory. These chunks can be retrieved more easily due to their coherent familiarity. 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 individual's perceptions and past experiences, that can be linked to the information set. The size of the chunks generally range anywhere from two to six items, but often differ based on language and culture.
The phenomenon of chunking as a memory mechanism is easily observed in the way individuals group numbers, and information, in the 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 day, month and year. OK! This very well explains the term "chunking". In fact, many of us have been practicing this trick (by self-discovery) but today we know that it has some formal or scientific name. In fact, it's a wide are for research in psychology and you can find many articles on the Internet about chunking. One good link to read an article is here.
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 day, month and year. OK! This very well explains the term "chunking". In fact, many of us have been practicing this trick (by self-discovery) but today we know that it has some formal or scientific name. In fact, it's a wide are for research in psychology and you can find many articles on the Internet about chunking. One good link to read an article is here.
Let me quote a part of this article:
"Effective Chunking Techniques
So practice is the key. Huh, we already know that..don't we?
- Practice: Challenge yourself to remember lists of things, whether it’s your grocery list, vocabulary words or important dates. As you become better at remembering larger chunks of information, continue to challenge yourself to remember even more."
So practice is the key. Huh, we already know that..don't we?
So how to practice chunking?
Well, it's not difficult. Just find a long series of numbers such a phone numbers which can be easily available from newspapers, ads, etc. But this sounds dull and boring. Can there be a fun way to do this? The answer is YES!
Memory Challenges. This game does it perfectly.
The Game starts with 3 numbers appearing on the screen one after another and the disappear. Then a random list of numbers appears below. You have to tap numbers from that list in the order that you remembered.
As you score more and more 2 digit numbers and then letters and more and more numbers start appearing gradually. You can remember the entire list by making up chunks of 3 or 4 as you are comfortable and put the numbers back. Looks like fun? Go Ahead and try the game.
