Memory
Chunking
Organizing separate items into meaningful, familiar groups can make information easier to perceive, rehearse, and retrieve.
Scientific category · 22 concepts
Findings about temporary storage, recall, recognition, practice, spacing, and the way presentation changes what people remember.
Questions this category answers
Research context: Memory science, learning science, and cognitive psychology
Reference set
Memory
Organizing separate items into meaningful, familiar groups can make information easier to perceive, rehearse, and retrieve.
Memory
Cognitive load describes demands placed on limited working-memory resources while a person learns or performs a task.
Memory
Verbal and nonverbal representations can create partly independent, connected memory codes that support later understanding and retrieval.
Memory
Retrieval improves when available cues overlap with information and context encoded during learning.
Memory
Accessible memory for newly learned material often declines rapidly at first and more gradually later when there is no effective review or retrieval.
Memory
Information people generate themselves is often remembered better than comparable information they only read.
Memory
Intrinsic cognitive load is the working-memory demand created by interacting elements that are inherent to what must be understood or performed.
Memory
Memory often improves when encoding engages meaning and relationships rather than only surface appearance or sound.
Memory
Immediate-memory performance is limited and can improve through meaningful recoding, but Miller’s ‘seven plus or minus two’ is not a universal UI item limit.
Memory
Retrospective evaluation of an experience can be disproportionately influenced by its most intense moment and its ending rather than its full duration.
Memory
Pictures are often remembered better than comparable words when they are recognizable, relevant, and tested under suitable conditions.
Memory
Performance commonly improves quickly during early practice and more slowly later, but individual learning is not universally described by one power function.
Memory
Items encountered early in a sequence often receive a recall advantage, partly because they can receive more rehearsal or distinctive context.
Memory
Recently presented items often receive a recall advantage when they remain accessible at the time of test.
Memory
Make relevant objects, actions, and options visible or readily retrievable so people do not have to recall them unaided.
Memory
Recall often varies by an item’s position in a sequence, with advantages for early and recent items under many test conditions.
Memory
Short-term memory refers to limited retention of information over a brief interval when it has not yet become durable long-term knowledge.
Memory
Learning episodes separated across time often support longer retention than the same practice concentrated into one session.
Memory
Actively retrieving learned information can improve later retention more than spending the same time restudying it.
Memory
An item that differs from otherwise similar surrounding items is often more likely to be noticed or remembered.
Memory
Working memory is a limited system for temporarily maintaining and manipulating information needed by the current task.
Memory
Interrupted goals may remain mentally active and prompt resumption, but unfinished tasks do not show a reliable universal memory advantage.