{"id":18,"date":"2007-07-29T21:53:17","date_gmt":"2007-07-29T21:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/?p=18"},"modified":"2026-07-22T00:19:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T05:19:01","slug":"seven-plus-or-minus-two-the-psychology-of-short-term-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/seven-plus-or-minus-two-the-psychology-of-short-term-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven plus or minus two: the psychology of short term memory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Studies have shown that human beings can hold seven &#8220;bits&#8221; of information, plus or minus two. So if you&#8217;re really talented you can hold nine, and most people can probably at least hold five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, what is a &#8220;bit&#8221; of information? I&#8217;m not going to try to define that scientifically, although I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s been done before. However I will suggest that a bit could be a thought, an idea you&#8217;re trying to hold onto (whether that&#8217;s consciously driven or unconsciously), or just paying attention to the space between your toes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was reading an<strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spring.org.uk\/2007\/02\/magical-number-seven-plus-or-minus-two.php\" title=\"Seven +\/- Two\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">article at PsyBlog<\/a><\/strong> about this characteristic of short term memory, and it noted something very interesting: That a six-month old infant can only hold ONE bit of information at any given time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Is this an advantage or a disadvantage? If your world only consists of one thing, that might mean you can&#8217;t get too complex with your thoughts. But then, complexity leads to confusion and thinking you know things. An infant doesn&#8217;t think they know anything, and as a result they are like silly putty, which as you know will absorb the ink from any section of the newspaper that you want to press it down upon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let me know your thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Studies have shown that human beings can hold seven &#8220;bits&#8221; of information, plus or minus two. So if you&#8217;re really talented you can hold nine, and most people can probably at least hold five. So, what is a &#8220;bit&#8221; of information? I&#8217;m not going to try to define that scientifically, although I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,60],"tags":[14,45],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology","category-psychology-suggestibility","tag-nlp","tag-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1103,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/1103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trancedout.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}