Miller, G. (1956). The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information. The Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
Information measurement Miller uses a a communication system example to describe information received by an observer. According to this example, observer becomes the communication channel, stimuli is input and response is output. He suggests that the measure of transmitted information is a input-output correlation.
Absolute judgement: If observer’s absolute judgments are quiet accurate, then all the input information will be transmitted and will be recovered from his responses.
Channel capacity: As the given information is increased, the the transmitted informtation will increase and at some value it will start to go down. This value is channel capacity.
To measure absolute judgment in unidimensional stimulis, there have been experiments on loudness, taste, points on a line. Channel capaticity for these experiment ranges from 1.6 to 3.9 bits which equals to 3 to 15 categories.
When the experiments are done with multi dimensional stimuli, the total capacity increases. Multi dimensional meaning more variables added, e.g. x, y position of a point instead ofn a point on a line.
The span of immediate memoryspan of absolute judgment: the limit to the accuracy which is usually close to number seven
To change this limit, the author suggests to arrange the task so that one can make absolute judgements in a sequence. This way the limitation becomes the number of items instead of amount of information. Number of bits of information is constant for absolute judgment and number of chunks of information is constant for immediate memory.
Recoding: grouping the information into units or chunks e.g. a 18 bit binary number into 9 idigits in base 4, those 9 digits to 6 digits in base 8, etc a huge information can be processed by immediate memory within these less number of chunks.
Information measurement Miller uses a a communication system example to describe information received by an observer. According to this example, observer becomes the communication channel, stimuli is input and response is output. He suggests that the measure of transmitted information is a input-output correlation.
Absolute judgement: If observer’s absolute judgments are quiet accurate, then all the input information will be transmitted and will be recovered from his responses.
Channel capacity: As the given information is increased, the the transmitted informtation will increase and at some value it will start to go down. This value is channel capacity.
To measure absolute judgment in unidimensional stimulis, there have been experiments on loudness, taste, points on a line. Channel capaticity for these experiment ranges from 1.6 to 3.9 bits which equals to 3 to 15 categories.
When the experiments are done with multi dimensional stimuli, the total capacity increases. Multi dimensional meaning more variables added, e.g. x, y position of a point instead ofn a point on a line.
The span of immediate memoryspan of absolute judgment: the limit to the accuracy which is usually close to number seven
To change this limit, the author suggests to arrange the task so that one can make absolute judgements in a sequence. This way the limitation becomes the number of items instead of amount of information. Number of bits of information is constant for absolute judgment and number of chunks of information is constant for immediate memory.
Recoding: grouping the information into units or chunks e.g. a 18 bit binary number into 9 idigits in base 4, those 9 digits to 6 digits in base 8, etc a huge information can be processed by immediate memory within these less number of chunks.
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