The limit of mental structures.
The "magical" number of 4 has been demonstrated to limit much of human information processing. The relevant evidence is briefly reviewed. It is proposed that the organization of processing structures is based on interconnected bidirectional pairs, with every element paired with every other one. The limit arises because of the large increase in links among elements required beyond structures of size 3 and 4.
a University of California , San Diego.
George
G
Mandler
D003210:Concept Formation; D006801:Humans; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D013850:Thinking
information processing; organization theory; subitizing; working memory