- In full:
- George Armitage Miller
- Born:
- February 3, 1920, Charleston, West Virginia, U.S.
- Died:
- July 22, 2012, Plainsboro, New Jersey (aged 92)
- Awards And Honors:
- National Medal of Science (1991)
- Subjects Of Study:
- psycholinguistics
George A. Miller
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Who was George A. Miller?
George A. Miller (1920ā2012) was a highly influential American psychologist and one of the founders of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He is known for his research in psycholinguistics and human communication. Miller's most famous discovery showed that human short-term memory can hold approximately seven pieces of information, plus or minus two.
Miller's work led researchers to move away from the behaviorally oriented approach based on stimulus-response. In the 1980s, he contributed to the development of WordNet, a large online database of English words showing semantic and lexical relationships between synonymous terms. Miller cofounded the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies in 1960 and helped establish the Princeton Cognitive Science Laboratory in 1986.
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What is George A. Miller known for in psychology?
George A. Miller (1920-2012) was an American psychologist and one of the founders of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He is known for his work in psycholinguistics and human communication.
Miller's most famous discovery, outlined in his 1956 paper, is that human short-term memory can generally hold only about seven pieces of information, plus or minus two. He also introduced the concept of recoding, reorganizing information into fewer units to overcome short-term memory limits. In 1960, Miller, along with Eugene Galanter and Karl Pribram, proposed the TOTE (test, operate, test, exit) sequence, which replaced the stimulus-response model and significantly impacted psychology by providing a realistic model of how humans pursue goals.
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What famous idea did Miller propose about short-term memory?
George A. Miller, a founder of cognitive psychology, is known for his research on the capacity of short-term memory. In his 1956 paper, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information," Miller proposed that humans can process about seven units of information, plus or minus two, at a time.
Miller stressed the importance of recoding information into fewer units to increase the amount of data that can be processed effectively, helping to overcome the information-processing limit.
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How did Millerās research change our understanding of memory?
George A. Miller's research significantly shifted the understanding of memory by demonstrating the limited capacity of human short-term memory. His famous paper, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" (1956), introduced the idea that humans can only process about seven chunks of information at a time.
Miller also emphasized the importance of recoding, where information is reorganized into fewer, more meaningful units, to enhance processing capacity. His work encouraged the move away from behaviorism, highlighting mental phenomena as a legitimate subject for empirical study. Additionally, Miller's TOTE model offered a new perspective on how humans pursue goals, influencing later problem-solving theories.
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What is the 'magical number seven' concept, and why is it important?
The "magical number seven," identified by George A. Miller, suggests that humans can process only a limited number of information units in their short-term memory, approximately seven, plus or minus two.
Miller stressed that people recode information into meaningful chunks to increase the amount of data they can process. This helps bypass the information-processing limit of seven items. Verbal recoding is the most common method, such as remembering a story by reducing it to a basic framework and organizing details around it.
Miller's work is important as it provided insights into the capacity of short-term memory and its role in cognitive processes.
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How did George A. Millerās work influence modern cognitive psychology?
George A. Miller significantly shaped modern cognitive psychology. His rejection of behaviorism paved the way for the study of mental phenomena through empirical methods. Miller's "Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two" (1956) highlighted the limited capacity of short-term memory, influencing understanding of human information processing. His TOTE model (test, operate, test, exit) offered a realistic view of goal pursuit, shifting focus from stimulus-response frameworks. Additionally, Miller's work on WordNet, a lexical database simulating human verbal memory, has become a valuable tool in linguistic research.
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George A. Miller (born February 3, 1920, Charleston, West Virginia, U.S.ādied July 22, 2012, Plainsboro, New Jersey) was an American psychologist who was one of the founders of cognitive psychology and of cognitive neuroscience (see cognitive science). He also made significant contributions to psycholinguistics and the study of human communication. One of Millerās most famous discoveries was that human short-term memory is generally limited to holding seven pieces of information, plus or minus two.
Miller received a B.A. in history and speech (1940) and an M.A. in speech (1941) from the University of Alabama and an M.A. (1944) and a Ph.D. (1946) in psychology from Harvard University. While at Harvard he served in the Army Signal Corps during World War II. He later taught and did research at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Rockefeller University. In 1979 he joined the faculty of Princeton University, where he became professor emeritus in 1990.
After initially adopting the behavioristic framework that dominated experimental psychology in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s, Miller came to find it too limiting. Whereas classical behaviorism had viewed the mind as impossible to study scientifically because its states and operations are not directly observable, Miller began to argue that mental phenomena were a legitimate subject of psychological research and that they could be studied through empirical and objective means.
In a famous paper, āThe Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Informationā (1956), Miller proposed as a law of human cognition and information processing that humans can effectively process no more than seven units, or chunks, of information, plus or minus two pieces of information, at any given time. That limit applied to short-term memory and to a number of other cognitive processes, such as distinguishing different sound tones and perceiving objects at a glance.
Miller stressed the importance of recodingāthe reorganization of information into fewer units with more bits of information per unitāas a central feature of human thought processes. Recoding increases the quantity of data that one can process effectively and can help to overcome the seven-item information-processing limit. Miller held that the most common kind of recoding is verbalāwhat one relies upon when trying to remember a story or an event, for example. Thus, the story in 1 below may be verbally recoded as the story in 2:
- Franny went to the park with Zooey yesterday, and they played Frisbee, flew kites, and lain in the grass looking at birds. Then they went to a nearby diner and had grilled-cheese sandwiches with french fries.
- A girl and boy (Zooey and Franny) went to the park (Frisbee, kites, birds) and ate (grilled cheese and fries at diner).
In the recoded form the story is reduced to a basic framework, and the details (indicated in parentheses) are organized around the framework.
In 1960 Miller, Eugene Galanter, and Karl Pribram proposed that stimulus-response (an isolated behavioral sequence used to assist research) be replaced by a different hypothesized behavioral sequence, which they called the TOTE (test, operate, test, exit). In the TOTE sequence a goal is first planned, and a test is performed to determine whether the goal has been accomplished. If it has not been accomplished, operations are performed to achieve the goal. The test is performed again, and exit occurs if the goal is achieved. Otherwise, the process repeats.
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TOTE had a significant impact on psychology, because it provided a realistic model of how humans pursue goals and carry out plans. Millerās work encouraged researchers to abandon the more constricted, behaviorally oriented approach based on stimulus-response. The TOTE unit also served as the basis for many later theories of problem solving.
In the 1980s Miller helped to develop WordNet, a sizable online database of English words that displayed semantic and lexical relationships between sets of synonymous terms. Designed to simulate the organization of human verbal memory, WordNet was a widely used linguistic research tool.
Miller cofounded (with Jerome S. Bruner) the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies in 1960 and helped to establish the Princeton Cognitive Science Laboratory in 1986. Several of his books, such as Language and Communication (1951) and Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960), are considered influential. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1957) and the National Academy of Sciences (1962). He received numerous honours and awards, including the National Medal of Science (1991) and the Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association (2003).