Question

Memory is the ability to store and retrieve information over time and is the result of the processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval. Memory plays a role in the most mundane activities, such as remembering where the car keys are, and the most elaborate of processes, such as forming a personal identity or establishing neural connections. Memories are not passive recordings of the world, but instead result from combining incoming information with previous experiences. Encoding is the process of linking new and old information together and turning that information into lasting memories. Memory is influenced by the type of encoding we perform regardless of whether we consciously intend to remember an event, fact, or experience. Semantic encoding (actively linking incoming information to existing associations and knowledge), visual imagery encoding (converting incoming information into mental pictures), and organizational encoding (noticing relationships among items to be encoded) all enhance memory. Different regions within the frontal lobes play important roles in semantic encoding and organizational encoding, whereas the occipital lobes are important for visual imagery encoding.

Lucky Sevens Exercise

A casual glance at the world reveals that an inordinate number of things seem to conform to the 7 ± 2 rule made famous by George Miller in 1956, who found that the capacity of short-term memory was 7, plus or minus 2, chunks of information. The creations of ZIP codes, telephone numbers (with or without area code), Social Security numbers, and 5-, 7-, or 9-point Likert scales all suggest that people have difficulty keeping track of information that goes beyond 9 or so chunks, or discriminations. Furthermore, in 1961 anthropologist Anthony Wallace studied vastly different cultures ranging enormously in size and still found a striking similarity: In each case the number of dimensions needed to account for kinship terms (“aunt,” “cousin,” “father”) was relatively invariant, ranging from about 5 to 9. It seemed to Wallace that the development of language, even across cultures, obeyed the constraint found in human cognitive processing.

Looking at your current world, generate examples of people, events, or things in the word that can be packaged with this 7 (+ or – 2) range. Here are some examples to give you some ideas: lucky number 7; 7 days of the week; 7 dwarfs.

Do your examples of “set of seven” represent simple numerology and coincidence or were the examples designed specifically to better accommodate the human memory?

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Answer 1

George Miller in 1956 came up with the Magic Number 7 (plus minus 2) idea which defines that most adults can hold 5 to 9 items in their short-term memory. He believed that the human mind can hold only these many items because of a limited number of slots in which items could be stored. However, he did not specify how much information one slot can hold. This can mean that chunks of information can be stored together even if they are quite big. Miller’s theory is supported by evidence from various studies like Jacobs (1887) who used the digit span test with every letter in the english alphabet and numbers apart from ‘w’ and ‘7’ because they had two syllables. The results showed that people could easily recall numbers (average span 9.3) but letters not so easily (average span 7.3).

Examples of magic number 7 could be the seven rings of hell, the seven deadly sins, seven colours of the rainbow, and seven notes of the musical scale. Looking at the first two examples, they are Biblical. The main idea behind the Bible was to teach the readers to be good as good wins over evil. Defining seven deadly sins and seven rings of hell could be an attempt at pushing it to people’s memory as defined by Miller’s idea. If people can remember seven elements easily, it’s only obvious that something like this would have seven elements to it. The next example, that of seven colours of rainbow seems to be coincidental. However, if we were to look deeply into it, a rainbow has way more than seven colours and defining seven colours as the main colours could be a way to easily remember the names of the colours and what a rainbow looks like. The seven notes on the musical scale again could be a way to imprint into memory the different notations so that they could be easily recalled.

Jacobs, J. (1887). Experiments in prehension. Mind, 12, 75-79