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How to Increase the Capacity of Short-Term Memory Through Chunking

Most of us have problems remembering things sometimes, especially complex collections of facts, names or numbers. Yet modern society often requires that we memorize vast amounts of information, from addresses and telephone numbers to Social Security numbers and online banking passwords. In addition, you are often required to remember pieces of data for short periods of time, storing them in your short-term memory. Normally, your short-term memory has a limited ability to hold information. However, there is a technique called "chunking" that you can use to expand this capacity.

Instructions

- 1
  Look at a piece of information that you need to remember, such as a sequence of numbers or letters. For example, you might have a password like "DGUICTNDIPOR" that you need to memorize. However, since your short-term memory is limited to four to seven items, this sequence of letters will exceed your capacity to temporarily memorize it.
- 2
  Mentally divide the sequence of letters into separate sets of three letters each. In the above example, this will lead to four chunks, specifically DGU, ICT, NDI and POR.
- 3
  Memorize each of these chunks in this order. Because your brain now sees these letters as four items, you should be able to memorize the sequence.

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