Re: CHAT: Parallelism

On Mon, 14 Jun 1999, David T Shoda wrote:

> ***People are only able to handle 7 (+2 or -2) bits of information at a
> time.  Is anyone here more familiar with this 'bit' of information, or
> information theory in general?
>
I'm a bit familiar with the theory, having participated in an experiment
based on it.  Apparently, this:

xkfp

Is four "bits" of information.  However, this:

dogs

Is only one.  Hence, we remember the order of planets not by remembering
nine units in a row (incidently, this applies particularly to short term
memory rather than long term memory), but as a single unit, a sentence:
"My very educated mother just baked us nine pies."

That's why I tend to suspect that we remember words as words, not as
collections of phonemes.  Of course, this would be very easy to discover
through experimentation.  Having a gap of thirty seconds between phonemes,
for instance.