Thus, capacity appears to remain roughly constant across studies, with larger chunks recalled when covert phonological rehearsal and/or grouping are possible. It appears that inter-word associations influence the sizes of recalled chunks but not capacity, i.e., the number of chunks an individual can recall. (2004) obtained similar results for lists comprising learned pairs of words. Similar findings of a capacity limit for coherent multi-word sequences, close to the core capacity limit of 3 or 4 chunks identified by Broadbent (1975) and Cowan (2001), were also obtained in other studies ( Glanzer & Razel, 1974 Simon, 1974). The more closely the presented words approximated English text, thus increasing in meaningfulness and grammaticality, the larger the adopted chunks became on average. A limit of about 4 to 6 adopted chunks was observed across all levels of approximation to English, providing further evidence for a basic capacity limit in working memory. Participants could recall the words in the list in any order, but the authors defined an “adopted chunk” as a group of items that were recalled in the correct sequential order. The lower levels of approximation had plausible transitions from one word to the next but each of these multi-word passages as a whole was ungrammatical and nonsensical. Participants were presented with lists of words that approximated English text to varying degrees.
#Forspoken definition free#
These extra processes may account for the different estimates of immediate memory capacity suggested by Miller versus Broadbent (1975) and Cowan.Īn early study of chunking in verbal free recall ( Tulving & Patkau, 1962) made use of pre-existing linguistic knowledge to examine capacity limits for chunks much longer than isolated words. The items might be grouped through the rapid learning of inter-item associations ( Cowan, 2001), or they might be covertly rehearsed in a repeating phonological sequence ( Baddeley, 1986). However, he did not consider other processes that might allow more items to be recalled than would be expected on the basis of a core capacity limit. Miller (1956) emphasized that more items could be recalled when they were organized into superordinate groups on the basis of pre-existing knowledge or associations, a process he called chunking. He suggested that the capacity limit reflects how many items can be held in the focus of attention at once. Cowan (2001) reviewed a great deal of further evidence, based on tasks in which items presumably cannot be grouped together to form higher-level chunks and cannot be phonologically rehearsed. For example, a normal young adult can recall a list of at least three unrelated items reliably, without error or hesitation ( Broadbent, 1975).
#Forspoken definition plus#
To situate the current study theoretically, we review the phenomenon of chunking and its relation to capacity limits in working memory and then discuss aging and its effects on memory, with an emphasis on how such effects might relate to chunk formation in language processing.įollowing Miller's (1956) seminal work on “the magical number seven plus or minus two,” subsequent research has provided further evidence for a basic capacity limit in working memory, although the limit is only approximately three to four unitary items or chunks ( Broadbent, 1975 Cowan, 2001). However, in order to determine how capacity limits affect working memory we present more than one such chunk and we vary the effective length of a chunk (by presenting lists of random words, lists of one-clause sentences, and lists of two-clause sentences).
The present research investigates similar processes in natural language, making use of the idea that the coherence of language does result in multiword chunks in memory (cf.
#Forspoken definition serial#
Naveh-Benjamin, Cowan, Kilb, and Chen (2007) recently provided evidence from the serial recall of word lists that the number of chunks that can be held in working memory decreases considerably in adult aging, and that the ability to retain multi-word chunks also decreases somewhat.
It is possible to ask, then, whether the number and/or size of chunks changes with age in adulthood. Prior research has demonstrated that both the number and size of chunks that are concurrently stored in working memory can be estimated from task performance (e.g., Cowan, Chen, & Rouder, 2004). A fundamental hypothesis in cognitive psychology is that the working memory system is capacity-limited in terms of the number of chunks that can be stored or maintained at once ( Miller, 1956 Cowan, 2001).
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