The Magical Number Seven: Exploring Miller’s Law and the Limits of Human Memory Capacity

Early studies of the capacity of short-term memory suggested that most people could remember approximately ___ bits of information

seven

Early studies of the capacity of short-term memory suggested that most people could remember approximately 7 plus or minus 2 bits of information. This capacity is commonly referred to as Miller’s Law, named after the cognitive psychologist George Miller who first wrote about it in his classic paper “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information.” Miller’s law suggests that the human brain has a limited ability to process and retain information, and that this limit is roughly equivalent to the number of unrelated items that can be held in working memory. However, it should be noted that more recent research has challenged this basic estimate, with some studies suggesting that the real capacity of short-term memory may be somewhat smaller or larger depending on a variety of factors such as age, individual differences, and the nature of the information being processed.

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