Cognitive Scaffold

Preparing your thinking workspace

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MENTAL MODEL · M6986

Miller's Law / 7±2

Miller's Law / 7±2
Learn & MetacognitionHigh supportCognitive Psychology
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Updated 2026-08-09

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

A cognitive psychology finding published by George Miller, reporting that the number of items a person can hold in immediate memory is limited to about seven, plus or minus two. Its core proposition is that the limit applies to chunks rather than raw items, so recoding information into meaningful groups expands effective capacity. The qualifier is that the figure is an approximate average for short-term retention and should not be read as a precise design constant.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Chunk building: group scattered items into meaningful units before presenting or memorizing them. - Item cap: hold any single list or menu to about seven entries and layer the rest. - External memory: offload exact details to notes and keep only the structure in mind.

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Anchor fast decisions

Immediate memory retains only a few discrete slots, and items exceeding that count are dropped rather than stored partially. Grouping items into one meaningful chunk occupies a single slot instead of many, so the same number of slots carries far more underlying information and recall improves without any change in raw capacity.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Source support: Explicit

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    en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller's_lawZH · Explicit
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