CHUNKING: A TECHNIQUE TO REMEMBER DIGITS

 

Every time I look at my debit or credit card, there is a common pattern, "A space between 16-digit card number". Likewise, If you have noticed that whenever we read a mobile number on websites or any other official paper, the number is divided into parts like - 080 3244 0000. I used to ask myself - Why can't we have a debit card number or mobile number without spaces? What these spaces signify?  Today, I found the answer to these questions in my current reading - "Moonwalk with Einstein by Joshua Foer" where the writer explained a term which we call Chunking.

SF, a "Carnegie Mellon University" undergraduate, took the mind-numbing memory test known as the digit span test, over and over again for 250 hours for two years. Digit span test helps to measure a person's working memory capacity for numbers. An average person can remember 7-digits plus-or-minus two numbers at a time, and they can do this by repeating the same digits again and again by themselves. We have a fancy term for this called "phonological loop". This acts as an echo, which produces a short-term memory buffer that can store sound for a couple of seconds. I am sure most of us know this. If we are not rehearsing the digit continuously, it will vanish out from our memory in a very short period. Ahh, I remember my old school days where I used to repeat Sanskrit words continuously in my mind before the exam.

 

SF was using this same technic, but his test score didn’t improve. After a couple of more hours, SF’s score improved. Now he could remember 10, 11, and more digits instead of limited to seven. The number of digits he could recall kept rising steadily. This had raised a few basic questions – 

 

What SF changed to remember more digits? 

What he was doing differently after 2 years? 

 

Scientists found that even if SF’s short-term memory was limited, he has figured out a way to store information from long-term memory. This involved a technique called chunking. Chunking is a way to decrease the number of items you have to remember by increasing the size of each item. The writer explained this in an efficient manner. Let’s say we ask you to memorize 22 letters “HEADSHOULDERSKNEETOES”. It is extremely hard for the average person to remember these letter words in one go. But when we break these 22 letters in small rememberable chunks- “HEAD”, “SHOULDER”, “KNEE”, “TOES”. We can re-iterate these four words from our long-term memory which makes it easy for our mind to store information. If you are a computer science student, you can see this as a “Link-List” where each object contains data plus the address of the next object. We just need to link the new word “HEAD” with our long-term memory of “HEAD”. Moreover, let’s say your credit/debit card number is 1402 9317 0599. You can remember this as of 14/02/93, and 17/05/99. It purely depends on an individual which pattern he uses to remember.

The above numbers can also be remembered as -14 minutes, 02 seconds, 93 milliseconds, and 17 minutes, 05 seconds, and 99 milliseconds. This technique helps to retain information in mind for the long-term. A few months ago, I read a book called “Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell” where the writer illustrated the practice of 10,000 hours to get expertise in any domain. Likewise, if anyone uses this technique continuously and does the implementation in their own easier way, he or she can increase their memory power over time.

Reference: Moonwalk with Einstein by Joshua Foer