Studying Blows!! Try Chunking it!

By Macey Whisker

As a college student, you will be doing a LOT of studying! Twelve to sixteen credit hours a semester is an intense workload, so let’s make it a bit lighter. Throw your previous study tools out the window, this is not high school anymore! If you are anything like me, your parents or guardians probably had you remember their phone number so you could contact them from anywhere, anytime, if there was an emergency. Some parents added a little tune or jingle to the memorization process to make it easier to recall, and some assigned the chunked numbers a specific value or meaning, which is what chunking is (1)! Splitting up a specific group or list of information into chunks then assigning those chunks a title or value makes the details not just easier to remember, but able to be retained for longer periods of time!

Chunking and Short Term Memory

The human memory greatly benefits from chunking, or clustering information, and can even improve the working memory (2)! Essentially, chunking bypasses the limitations of the short-term memory system and can allow people to recall more information by grouping it together (3). The term “recall” references the ability to retrieve already stored information from short-term memory, which you do every time you remember something (1). Think of a time you studied really hard for an exam but as soon as you opened the first page, the answers just narrowly escaped the tip of your tongue. This is an example of short-term memory interference, as something is blocking or interfering with your ability to retrieve that information (1)! Chunking is a great way to bypass this interference and allow for better retrieval of stored information (2).

How Do I “Chunk” Information?

That’s a great question! Let’s dive into it! In the spirit of Cognitive Psychology, let’s imagine for example that you are in a Psychology 101 course as a prerequisite or general education course. A lot of this class is going to be learning about influential psychologists, studying terms, delving into theories, and other tedious details that can be difficult to remember. Lets just say your first test is on psychologists, their theories, and the years they practiced psychology. Sigmund Freud developed the Psychoanalytic theory and practiced in the early 1900s, and so on and so forth. Instead of remembering the whole, chunk it into parts of your choice! I would take just Freud, as typically last names are used more commonly, break ‘Psychoanalytic’ into “psycho” and think of something else that I already know happened in the early 1900s (FBI established, WW1, etc.) to connect to the year. After picking my chunks, I would write them out “Freud, Psycho, WW1”, that way it is much easier to remember than the whole sentence. 

Let’s pick a different subject that’s a bit harder, how about Chemistry? You are now trying to study for an exam about the Periodic Table of Elements where you will be given a blank table and have to fill in each element, their atomic mass, and their atomic number (4). Split the table up into sections and begin by studying those sections, one at a time. You could even use the element’s symbols to spell out a word or use it as a reference for that element (I attached an example of the table below for reference). I personally would chunk by color, but you could do rows, symbols, sections and any of the options would work well (4)!

Chunk with Caution, Though!

As mentioned earlier, there exists such a thing called interference in memory recall. The more items attempting to be chunked into the short-term memory, the likelihood increases that those items could become confused with one another (1). There are two types of this confusion, retroactive and proactive interference. Retroactive refers to what you know now making it harder to recall something that happened in the past (5). For example, let’s consider you have two exams coming up for two completely opposite subjects such as math and art. You decide to study for math first because you have your math class at 8am, then study for art afterwards because that class is not until 11am. After you finish studying for art, you realize you are struggling to recall any of the materials you had previously studied for your math exam. On the flip side, proactive interference is the complete opposite, with information from the past affecting your ability to recall something that happened currently (1)(5). After arriving at your college as a brand new freshman, you are now tasked with remembering the college address and your dorm or apartment number. This may prove difficult, especially if you lived in your hometown residence your entire life. It will be much easier to remember your home address than your new one, and it will definitely cause some proactive interference for a little while!

Chunking is a fantastic tool for studying with research showing student preference, especially for online courses (6)! Interference happens more commonly than you think with just about everything you do in life or attempt to remember. It is just more consciously recognized when you’re trying to cram information into your brain so you don’t fail that chemistry test! At the end of the day, you should choose whatever study method is most effective for yourself and your intended major. Chunking is just another tool for your college studying toolbox!

References

1. Goldstein, E. B. (2019). Cognitive Psychology(5th Ed). Cengage Learning.
2. Akyürek, E. G., Kappelmann, N., Volkert, M., & van Rijn, H. (2017). What You See Is What You Remember: Visual Chunking by Temporal Integration Enhances Working Memory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 29(12), 2025–2036. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01175
3. P.J. Burtis. (1982). Capacity increase and chunking in the development of short-term memory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(82)90068-6. 
4. Lah, N. C., Saat, R. M., & Hassan, R. (2014). Cognitive Strategy in Learning Chemistry: How Chunking and Learning Get Together. Malaysian Online Journal of Educational Sciences, 2(1), 9–15.
5. Hulbert, J. C., & Anderson, M. C. (2020). Does retrieving a memory insulate it against memory inhibition? A retroactive interference study. Memory, 28(3), 293–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2019.1710216 
6. Humphries, B., & Clark, D. (2021). An Examination of Student Preference for Traditional Didactic or Chunking Teaching Strategies in an Online Learning Environment. Research in Learning Technology, 29.