AP PSYCHOLOGY

COGNITION

THINKING AND LANGUAGE

Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
Which psychologist reasearched the amount of information that we could retain and found it was around seven items?
A
Elizabeth Loftus
B
George Sperling
C
George Miller
D
Noam Chomsky
E
Herman Ebbinghaus
Explanation: 

Detailed explanation-1: -It was written by the cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Harvard University’s Department of Psychology and published in 1956 in Psychological Review. It is often interpreted to argue that the number of objects an average human can hold in short-term memory is 7 ± 2.

Detailed explanation-2: -Miller, one of the founders of cognitive psychology, was a pioneer who recognized that the human mind can be understood using an information-processing model. His insights helped move psychological research beyond behaviorist methods that dominated the field through the 1950s.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Magic number 7 (plus or minus two) provides evidence for the capacity of short term memory. Most adults can store between 5 and 9 items in their short-term memory. This idea was put forward by Miller (1956) and he called it the magic number 7.

Detailed explanation-4: -He also made significant contributions to psycholinguistics and the study of human communication. One of Miller’s most famous discoveries was that human short-term memory is generally limited to holding seven pieces of information, plus or minus two.

Detailed explanation-5: -George Miller was a psychologist who theorized that short-term memory can hold between five and nine pieces of information. This information can be stored in single units called bits or in groupings called chunks. Creating chunks of information allows you to hold more information in short-term memory.

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