Magical Number 7 give or take 2

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i am just wondering if anyone could explain in further detail what the magical number 7 give or take 2 judgement, made by georger Miller?

-- jace carter (jernine@yorku.ca), October 09, 2003

Answers

George A. Miller (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, v. 63, 81-97.

This is too simplified, but... based on some evidence from the literature, Miller suggested that humans can process or hold in memory about seven (plus or minus two) items of information at a time. As applied to unidimensional stimuli such as auditory tones, for example, you might be able to hear an unfamiliar melody of seven notes, plus or minus two, and reproduce it completely and accurately (assuming you could whistle or sing the notes), but if a melody of, say, 10 notes was presented, you would be unlikely to be able to reproduce it completely and accurately. More complex or multidimensional information might be processed in "chunks" as opposed to single items, but, still, seven, plus or minus two, such chunks would be about all that you could process/reproduce at a time.

-- Roger K. Thomas (rkthomas@uga.edu), October 10, 2003.


The full article is available on-line at http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Miller/

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), October 10, 2003.

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