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George Armitrage Miller (February 3, 1920 – July 22, 2012) was one of the founders of the cognitive psychology field in the 20th century. He studied thinking, language, and memory and was known for his work in cognitive psychology. Many people who have never heard of Miller know about one of his research findings. Miller performed experiments and found out that if you ask people to remember a list of words or numbers, most people can remember only between five and nine words or numbers. He told other psychologists about this result. He wrote a paper explaining it. The talk and the paper were titled: "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two." Miller moved away from studying behaviorism, and focused on studying cognitive psychology. Miller worked with other psychologists such as Noam Chomsky, and is considered to be a founder of the field of study known as psycholinguistics. In 1991, Miller was awarded the National Medal of Science from the White House and the Louis E. Levy Medal from the Franklin Institute. Dr. Miller revolutionized the world of psychology by showing that even though the human mind is invisible, it could also be observed and tested in a laboratory setting.

Early Life and Education
Miller was born in Charleston, West Virginia. In 1940 he received his bachelors degree from the University of Alabama, where he majored in English and speech. In 1946, Miller received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard University. During his life, he taught as a professor at Princeton, Harvard, and Rockefeller University. He died in Plainsboro, New Jersey at the age of 92.

Chunking
The first concept introduced by Miller is known as chunking. Chunking is a way developed to help people remember a certain number of words or numbers. It is known to help with both short-term memory and long-term memory. When he asked subjects to perform memory tasks in various experiments, he noticed that most subjects recalled about seven units from a list regardless of the list topic. Miller said that the short-term memory could only hold 5-9 chunks of information (plus or minus two) and is also a way to increase the capacity of short term memory. A chunk can refer to digits, words, faces, or any type of meaningful unit. Chunking is when a person groups multiple words together to help with memory tasks. This technique can help people with recalling specific groups of words. According to Miller’s book The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information, remembering is much easier when the chunking technique is used. An example of chunking would be trying to remember a long sequence of digits. For example, 2 4 5 6 1 4 2 7 0 could be remembered by chunking those numbers into smaller meaningful units such as 245 614 270.

The Magical Number Seven
"The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits On Our Capacity for Processing Information" was a paper published originally in The Psychology Review. This paper remains Miller's most famous and cited piece of work in the history of psychology. It outlines the recollection of the number of items, numbers, or objects an average human memory can hold. Miller states in his paper, "This number assumes a variety of disguises, being sometimes a little larger and sometimes a little smaller than usual, but never changing so much as to be unrecognizable" (Miller 1956). He did a series of memory tasks that led him to believe that 7 was the magical number. The paper goes into depth stating how the memory span is a complicated source and how it can hold a lot of information.

Publications

 * Miller, G. A. (1956). "The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information". Psychological Review 63 (2): 81–97
 * Miller, G. A., Galanter, E., & Pribram, K. H. (1960). "Plans and the structure of behavior." Adams Bannister Cox Pubs.

Institutions
• Princeton University • Harvard University

Awards
•Distinguished Scientific Contribution award from the American Psychological Association, 1963.

•Distinguished Service award from the American Speech and Hearing Association, 1976.

•Award in Behavioral Sciences from the New York Academy of Sciences, 1982.

•Gold Metal from the American Psychological Foundation, 1990.

•National Medal of Science from The White House, 1991.

• Louis E. Levy Medal from the Franklin Institute, 1991.

• International Prize from the Fyssen Foundation, 1992.

•John P. McGovern award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2000.

•Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology award from the APA, 2003.

•Antonio Zampolli Prize from the European Languages Research Association, 2006.