Off-topic: Magic Number 7 (WAS: Re: XML Editors - Word 2000?? )

[Didier PH Martin]

Hi Andy,

I said gifted without mentioning that this skill is the result or nature or
of culture or even practice or any other kind of emotional state or source.
I agree that the word was badly chosen.

This said, it seems (from observation and experiments) that long term memory
is more influenced by emotional state than short term memory. Miller
referred to some experiments but these experiments tell us nothing about
short term memory being influenced by emotional state or practice. From
observation and experiments, we have indications that long term memory is
influenced by emotional state. But it seems that short term memory is not as
sensible to this variable. So, being open to your arguments, do you have any
article or study specifying explicitly that short term memory is influenced
by emotional state or practice?

regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind at netfolder.com
http://www.netfolder.com

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk [mailto:owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
Andy.Bradbury at syntegra.bt.co.uk
Sent: Monday, July 05, 1999 5:23 AM
To: xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Subject: RE: Off-topic: Magic Number 7 (WAS: Re: XML Editors - Word
2000?? )




Didier wrote:
>The magic seven comes from a well know article form George Miller in 1956
>called "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our
>Capacity for Processing Information". In this now famous article, Miller
>stated that the short term memory can handle 7 elements plus or minus 2.
>This means that gifted people can remember with their short term memory 9
>elements and the less gifted 5. The average person can remember 7

Just for the sake of accuracy, this has nothing whatever to do with being
gifted.

Miller's article simply records certain experiments (carried out by other
researchers) and notes the overall implications.

In practise, unless you are skilled in memorisation techniques, the amount
of information you can carry in working memory will vary according to
context, emotional state, interest in the material being memorised and so
on.

Regards

Andy B.




xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN
981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following
message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)


xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)