Train Your Mind for Peak Performance: A Science-Based Approach for Achieving Your Goals (Lifetools: Books for the General Public) by Jr. Bourne Lyle E

Author:Jr. Bourne Lyle E.
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781433816185
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Published: 2013-11-17T14:00:00+00:00

EXERCISE 3.4. Chunking—How Big Should the Chunks Be?

When you are confronted with a daunting memory task and you want to use chunking, how big should your chunks be? Let’s say you want to break down a long list of words into smaller sublists or chunks, just as the memory expert SF did with lists of digit strings. How long should those sublists be? The sublists don’t all have to be the same length, and it should be helpful to find out what the optimal chunk size is for you. Here’s an exercise that should help you make some decisions about how to use chunking.

Try to learn three different lists of 24 randomly selected words in three different ways. For the first list, break it down into four chunks of six words each. For the second list, break it down into six chunks of four words each. And for the third list, break it down into eight chunks of three words each. For each chunk in each list, try to form a sentence containing all of the words in that chunk. Study the lists one at a time. After a certain length of study time, say 10 minutes, record how many of the words you recalled correctly from each list. Did you recall more words when you used six-word chunks, four-word chunks, or three-word chunks? After some practice at chunking, many people find that longer chunks (but not too long) work best. Note also that the best chunk size for words formed into sentences might not be the best chunk size for other material. So you might want to try this exercise again for other material, like numerical digit strings, that you need to remember to see what the best chunk size is in that case. Of course, something other than sentences will be required to organize digits. SF used track times that he had great familiarity with.

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