An example of a similar effect is the ink-blot technique of making letters ambigu-
ous, Lindsay and Norman (1972) [26], this involves part of a letter in a display
of a word being obliterated by an ink-blot; the presence of the rest of the word
disambiguates (i.e. removes the ambiguity in the choice of letter) the letter so
that it is perceived as a letter which produces a word rather than a non-word.
In other words object name strategy is often deployed in the apprehension of
visual objects. In the view adopted here these are two examples of the similar
phenomena to that found in colour perception; to wit when language is present
it can adjust thought via a naming strategy. The difference is that these two
object perception examples are not switched; and as they can be subject to
subsequent adjustments they are not encapsulated either.
4 Memory Chunking
4.1 Recalling Re-coded Events
Short term memory has a capacity to re-call about seven distinct elements
of information, Miller (1956) [32]. Miller cites much evidence for this: from
sound perception, where untrained people have the ability to recognize about
six different pitches and five degrees of loudness; musically trained people can
recognize a greater number of distinct pitches. There are similar results for
the ability to recognize other uni-dimensional stimuli, which means a single
stimuli without interference from other effects. For multi-dimensional stimuli,
where there is more than one spectrum of features which distinguishes a stimuli,
there is a relationship between the number of stimuli present and the number
of ob jects that can be identified; inspection of Figure 6 in Miller (1956) [32]
suggests that the number of objects that can be identified is proportional to the
hyperbolic tangent of the number of stimuli present. Miller suggests that the
mechanism by which this is achieved is by re-coding the sequence of information
into chunks, and this is referred to as a chunking strategy; he says, Miller (1956)
[32] p.93:
”There are many ways to do this re-coding, but probably the sim-
plest is to group the input events, apply a new name to the group,
and then remember the new name rather than the original events.”
This re-coding strategy is chunking strategy in memory, which is here called
memory chunking. Memory chunking is not encapsulated as it is possible for
memories to suffer from subsequent interference. Memory chuncking is not
switched.
4.2 Memory for Chinese Words and Idioms
This mechanism seems to be related to the naming strategy of the previous sec-
tions, the connection between the two effects is illustrated by the study of short
term memory capacity for Chinese words done by Zhang and Simon (1985) [53].
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