Eight Six Seven Five Three Oh Nine!

If you are not of a specific generation you might not know what that title is referring to! Yet others will recognize Jenny's number quite easily. If I were to ask you to try to memorize this series of letters FOIAHUDCVSPS it would be difficult... Fact or Fallacy? Fact. Asking the average person to memorize a twelve letter sequence would be a difficult task for most. However, if I were to mention that the letters were a series of four acronyms (Freedom of Information Act, Housing and Urban Development, CVS Pharmacy, and Postscript) that would make the task simple. "Miller's Seven" is a theory developed by George Miller in 1956 that states although our brain is astonishing at remembering tens of thousands of items over our life time, unless we are able to "chunk" information into smaller segments our short-term memory is only able to remember about seven items. Mnemonic tools can be used to extend short-term memory, which is helpful because more recent studies indicate that the actual chunks we can remember is closer to four. Happy Chunking! See you next week for my “Free Friday Fact or Fallacy” (F4) blog post. Dr. Misty R. Sharp Ladd, CPP, PCI, PSP

Misty Ladd

01.07.2022

F4 Blog Post