Abstract
Chunking, the technique of grouping similar concepts together in order to aid memory, has long been associated with better working memory performance. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of chunking on the memorization of words. A total of 18 participants were given a list of 18 words to remember, with nine of these being informed about the technique of chunking before attempting the memory task. The results of an independent samples t-test show that chunking has a significant (p=0.05) effect on the word memorization skills of the participants (t=8.390). This supports previous research that suggests that chunking can have a positive effect on the working memory of someone engaging in a memorization task. This contributes to the overall literature on chunking and working memory and the different ways that memory skills can be improved.
Introduction
There are many different techniques that people use in order to memorize words better (Franco & Destrebecqz, 2012). One of these techniques is known as chunking, in which an individual will remember more words by using their relationship to each other to help with memorization. This technique words as it allows for a chain of thought to be derived from the process, which in turn requires less memorization effort than remembering each word individually (Simmering & Perone, 2013). Chunking is also important as it highlights the patterns humans use to help them with memory-related tasks. It can also be useful as a way of understanding how best to teach students (or those in professions that require memorization skills) to retain large amounts of information. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of chunking on word memorization to assess the extent to which this technique works.
Evidence from previous research suggests that chunking has a significant positive effect on the number of words that are recalled during experimental conditions. Interestingly, chunking has a wide number of applications across psychology, including improving the working memory task performance in early Alzheimer’s patients (Huntley et al., 2011). Chunking is also noted to be a developmental memory task that has a wide number of applications in education, which makes it relevant to the performance of students of all ages (Bor & Seth, 2012). This highlights the importance of understanding chunking and the effects that it has. Whilst many studies have previously been completed on how chunking affects working memory in general, particularly in terms of numerical memory (Mathy & Feldman, 2012), less is known about how chunking can affect working memory for word memorization. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of chunking on word memorization in students at a university.
Design
This study was designed to investigate the effects of chunking on word memorization. To assess this, a memory test was designed to include 18 different words. Nine participants were in the control condition, in which they were told only to memorize the words with no further instructions. Nine participants were in the chunking condition, in which the same words were given but an additional instruction to memorize the words based on their relationship to each other was given to the participants.
Participants
18 participants took part in this study and gave informed consent about the study protocol.
Materials/Apparatus
Signed consent form
Instruction sheet
List of words for memorization
Stopwatch
Procedure
The participants were randomly assigned to either the control or experimental condition using a random number generator. The participants were then informed of the process of the experiment and asked to sign the informed consent form. The participants were then given either the instructional sheet without the chunking hint or with the chunking hint, and were told to read the instructions. They were then asked if they understood the instructions. When all clarifications had been made, the participants were then told to turn over the sheet of paper, which had 18 words on the other side, some of which were related to each other. They were given two minutes to memorize as many words as possible, which was timed using a stopwatch. After the time was up, the participants were given two further minutes to recall as many of the words from the sheet as possible, which they wrote down on the sheet of paper. These results were then counted and recorded by the experimenter.
Results
The significance level of this research was 0.05, but the t-value here was 8.390, suggesting a strong positive effect for chunking on the number of words memorized. The average (mean) number of words memorized by those who were informed about the chunking technique was 12.44 compared with 7.56 in the control group. Again, the suggestion is that chunking has a strong, significant effect on the number of words that can be memorized in a short time span. This supports the hypothesis that there is a link between chunking and working memory performance, as suggested by the research of Mathy & Feldman (2012).
Discussion
This study aimed to investigate the effects of chunking on the ability to remember a number of seemingly unrelated words. By telling participants in the experimental condition about the technique of chunking – remembering words by grouping similar concepts together – there was a significant increase in the number of words that the participants could remember as part of this task. This supports findings from the literature that show that chunking has a positive effect on working memory and can allow people to remember and retain more information in the short-term (Houston, 2014). It also highlights how the technique can be used to help students to remember and recall more information in the short-term, making chunking a possible technique for helping students that are struggling to remember large amounts of information in school or college to improve their overall academic performance (Houston, 2014).
This research also fits into the wider topic of memory assistance when trying to memorize information in general. Thaut et al. (2014) found that using music mnemonics can help with working memory in both healthy individuals and those with multiple sclerosis-related issues. This suggests that the use of memory techniques could have a positive effect on a variety of different conditions that affect memory, which is something to investigate in the future. Symalec, Page & Duyck (2012) also found that lexical representations and repetition play a part in how chunking works in terms of memorizing large numbers of words. Again, the current study adds to this general understanding of how memory techniques can improve memorization of word lists such as the one in the current study. It would be interesting to conduct an experiment on whether certain techniques are more effective than others to add further to the research.
In conclusion, chunking appears to be an effective technique when attempting to memorize lists of words. This is because it has a positive impact on working memory and makes it easier to recall information as they are linked in the brain. This research adds to a growing body of literature on working memory and memorization techniques and how they are impacted by certain approaches to memory. It would be interesting to consider whether chunking is one of the most effective memorization techniques, and how chunking affects the memorization of other classes of information. Despite some limitations of this research, namely the small sample size, it is supported by a variety of different pieces of research in the past and gives insight into this interesting and complex topic. Larger sample sizes will help to highlight whether this phenomenon is universal and can be generalized to wider populations. Chunking is, therefore, a useful technique to use when trying to remember large lists of unrelated words, but further research is needed to assess the effect of chunking on other areas of working memory. It is hoped that this research will help to guide students who are unable to memorize large amounts of unrelated information.
References
Bor, D., & Seth, A. K. (2012). Consciousness and the prefrontal parietal network: insights from attention, working memory, and chunking. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 63.
Franco, A., & Destrebecqz, A. (2012). Chunking or not chunking? How do we find words in artificial language learning? Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 8(2), 144–154.
Houston, J. P. (2014). Fundamentals of learning and memory. Academic Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=hr&lr=&id=SUu0BQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=chunking+word+memory&ots=-V6n-UgoJO&sig=FWRD-Cp07nfBmtWgksP1sTjrcc4
Huntley, J., Bor, D., Hampshire, A., Owen, A., & Howard, R. (2011). Working memory task performance and chunking in early Alzheimer’s disease. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 198(5), 398–403.
Mathy, F., & Feldman, J. (2012). What’s magic about magic numbers? Chunking and data compression in short-term memory. Cognition, 122(3), 346–362.
Simmering, V. R., & Perone, S. (2013). Working memory capacity as a dynamic process. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 567.
Szmalec, A., Page, M. P., & Duyck, W. (2012). The development of long-term lexical representations through Hebb repetition learning. Journal of Memory and Language, 67(3), 342–354.
Thaut, M. H., Peterson, D. A., McIntosh, G. C., & Hoemberg, V. (2014). Music mnemonics aid verbal memory and induce learning–related brain plasticity in multiple sclerosis. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056382/
