What is "chunking"

n. 1 (context psychology English) A strategy for making more efficient use of short-term memory by recoding information. 2 (context writing English) A method of presenting information which splits concepts into small pieces or "chunks" of information to make reading and understanding faster and easier, using such methods as bulleted lists, short subheadings, or short sentences with one or two ideas per sentence. 3 The process of reducing something to short, thick pieces, usually using a hammer or a crowbar. vb. (present participle of chunk English)

n. (psychology) the configuration of smaller units of information into large coordinated units [syn: unitization, unitisation]

Chunking in psychology is a process by which individual pieces of information are bound together into a meaningful whole (Neath & Surprenant, 2003). A chunk is defined as a familiar collection of more elementary units that have been inter-associated and stored in memory repeatedly and act as a coherent, integrated group when retrieved (Tulving & Craik, 2000). For example, instead of remembering strings of letters such as “Y-M-C-A-I-B-M-D-H-L”, it is easier to remember the chunks “ YMCA- IBM- DHL” consisting the same letters. Chunking uses one's knowledge to reduce the number of items that need to be encoded. Thus, chunks are often meaningful to the participant.

It is believed that individuals create higher order cognitive representations of the items on the list that are more easily remembered as a group than as individual items themselves. Representations of these groupings are highly subjective, as they depend critically on the individual's perception of the features of the items and the individual's semantic network. The size of the chunks generally ranges anywhere from two to six items, but differs based on language and culture (Vecchi, Monticelli, & Cornoldi, 1995).

In computer programming, chunking has multiple meanings.

Chunking may mean:

• Chunking (psychology), a short-term memory mechanism and techniques to exploit it
• Chunking (writing), a method of splitting content into short, easily scannable elements, especially for web audiences
• Chunking (computing), a memory allocation or message transmission procedure in computer programming
• CHUNKING, an extension method of the Extended SMTP electronic mail protocol in computer networking
• Chunking (computational linguistics), a method for parsing natural language sentences into partial syntactic structures
• Chunking (division), an approach for doing simple mathematical division sums, by repeated subtraction
• Chunking (music), a rhythm guitar and mandolin technique
• Pumpkin chunking, the activity of hurling pumpkins

Chunking is a method of presenting information which splits concepts into small pieces or "chunks" of information to make reading and understanding faster and easier. Chunking is especially useful for material presented on the web because readers tend to scan for specific information on a web page rather than read the page sequentially.

Chunked content usually contains:

• bulleted lists
• short subheadings
• short sentences with one or two ideas per sentence
• short paragraphs, even one-sentence paragraphs
• easily scannable text, with bolding of key phrases
• inline graphics to guide the eyes or illustrate points which would normally require more words

In mathematics education at primary school level, chunking (sometimes also called the partial quotients method) is an elementary approach for solving simple division questions, by repeated subtraction. It is also known as the hangman method with the addition of a line separating the divisor, dividend, and partial quotients. It has a counterpart in the grid method for multiplication.

To calculate the result of dividing a large number by a small number, the student repeatedly takes away "chunks" of the large number, where each "chunk" is an easy multiple (for example 100×, 10×, 5× 2×, etc.) of the small number, until the large number has been reduced to zero or the remainder is less than the divisor. At the same time the student keeps a running total of what multiple of the small number has so far been taken away, which eventually becomes the final result of the sum.

So, for example, to calculate , one might successively subtract 80, 40 and 8 to leave 4,

132
80 (10 × 8)
--
52
40 ( 5 × 8)
--
12
8 ( 1 × 8)
--
4
--------
132 = 16 × 8 + 4

to establish that is 16 (10+5+1) with 4 remaining.

In the UK, this approach for elementary division sums has come into widespread classroom use in primary schools since the late 1990s, when the National Numeracy Strategy in its "numeracy hour" brought in a new emphasis on more free-form oral and mental strategies for calculations, rather than the rote learning of standard methods.

Compared to the short division and long division methods that are traditionally taught, chunking may seem strange, unsystematic, and arbitrary. However, it is argued that chunking, rather than moving straight to short division, gives a better introduction to division, in part because the focus is always holistic, focusing throughout on the whole calculation and its meaning, rather than just rules for generating successive digits; and because its more free-form nature requires genuine understanding to be successful, rather than just the ability to follow a ritualised procedure.