ABSTRACT
The evidence that has been presented so far in this book shows that, in certain circumstances, one can begin to measure what appears to be chunks in memory. The various studies on memory for chess layouts (e.g., Chase & Simon, 1973; Gobet & Simon, 1996) and the recent work on serial recall by Cowan, Chen, & Rouder (2004), along with other works discussed in Chapter 3, suggests that there is a constant capacity. However, an important question is whether that capacity is limited to a few key situations or whether it is more general across various processing tasks. The message of this chapter is that the capacity limit of three to four chunks in the average adult (and less in children and probably in the elderly) is quite pervasive.
