The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two

The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity 
for Processing Information[1]
George A. Miller (1956)
Harvard University
First published in Psychological Review, 63, 81-97.
reproduced with permission, by Stephen Malinowski:
     http://www.yorku.ca/dept/psych/classics/Miller/

The classic paper on chunking. I recommend it. I find particularly
interesting Miller's identification of how concurrent use of other
modalities can help.

----
Diane Wilson paraphrases that concept as

"People can remember seven plus or minus two items at a time"
in:
     http://www.lava.net/~dewilson/web/assumptions.html

This assumption is sometimes misunderstood. The key word here is remember. 
It applies to recall, not recognition.

People should have to recall only a limited amount of information. They can 
recognize a correct response from a much larger set of choices.
----

The need to remember, short-term, is certainly what we are addressing for
accessibility. Recognition, however tedious, can happen if targets are
adequately differentiated in their descriptions, even if in a longer
list.

Regards/Harvey Bingham

Received on Monday, 26 June 2000 16:58:31 UTC