25 · Remembering
Chunking
Break information into small groups that mean something, and people take it in faster.
Evidence: Holds upWhat we do with it
- 01
Phone numbers come in chunks for a reason. Do the same with long codes and account numbers.
- 02
Headings, short paragraphs and white space let a page be scanned.
- 03
Group things by what they mean to the reader. How the database stores them doesn't matter to anyone reading.
Examples
Getting it wrong, getting it right.
Don't
An account number shown as 4485937261048823.
Do
4485 9372 6104 8823, and the input accepts it with or without the spaces.
The evidence
What the research says.
Solid. The classic demonstration is chess: in William Chase and Herbert Simon's 1973 study, a master recalled real board positions after a five-second look far better than a beginner, because he saw groups of pieces. With the same pieces placed at random, the advantage disappeared. Fernand Gobet and colleagues' 2001 review traced the same mechanism through verbal learning, expert memory and how children pick up language.
Sources
- Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63(2).
- Chase, W. G., & Simon, H. A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4(1).
- Gobet, F., Lane, P. C. R., Croker, S., Cheng, P. C.-H., Jones, G., Oliver, I., & Pine, J. M. (2001). Chunking mechanisms in human learning. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 5(6).
Last reviewed November 7, 2026. How we keep this current