#readwise # Chunking  ## Metadata - Full Title: Chunking - URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_(psychology)?wprov=sfti1 ## Highlights - In cognitive psychology, chunking is a process by which individual pieces of an information set are broken down and then grouped together in a meaningful whole. - A chunk is a collection of basic familiar units that have been grouped together and stored in a person's memory. These chunks are able to be retrieved more easily due to their coherent familiarity. - Chase and Simon (1973) and later Gobet, Retschitzki and de Voogt (2004) showed that chunking could explain several phenomena linked to expertise in chess.[20][21] Following a brief exposure to pieces on a chess board, skilled chess players were able to encode and recall much larger chunks than novice chess players. However, this effect is mediated by specific knowledge of the rules of chess; when pieces were distributed randomly (including scenarios that were not common or allowed in real games), the difference in chunk size between skilled and novice chess players was significantly reduced.