7 +/-2 pieces of information at any one time?

[j0hnny#]

what is the meaning of this 'at any one time' when talking about being aware of seven plus or minus two pieces of information at any one time?

if i reflect about what I am aware of at any one time - i can only say that I am aware of this, that, that, that, that, that, that, that - time is marching on as I identify each one.... am I only aware of one piece of information at any one time - I can only point to one at a time... so what is the story here? .... before reflecting about what I was just aware of I was busy thinking about time and cognition.... I was really tied up in thinking about that.... and it seemed to consume my whole attention.... it was what I was doing and I was only aware of doing it when I reflected on it... .... yet I typed some sh*t also.... so what is the deal here - what is the basis for this 7+/-2 claim? Am I aware before reflection or only after?

[Simple Guy]

The basis is the amount of information that can be consciously attended to,
concurrently. More than that makes information overwhelming. There
are, though, constant cyclings back and forth between conscious and subconsious
that take place so rapidly that multi-tasking with more than the 7 plus or minus 2
can seem to take place, e.g. as had to have taken place during the typing of your post.
I wonder how much variance exists to this, but think that this issue is really only of
academic value anyway.

When phone companies started to run out of phone numbers due to faxes,
computers, etc. there was discussion of extending the numbers to allow
for additional numbers. The 7 plus or minus claim was a basis for not
doing so.

[j0hnny#]

I am wondering if the amount of information attended to currently (concurrently kind of begs the question) is really one piece, which is then distinguished into several? And then the maximum that a person can count on reflection = 7+/-2 - cos when its actuallly happening - when I'm engaged in some activity typing - I might start thinking about something else while I type or notice the tap in the hot water tank dripping and hear the fan on the computer and the one in the bathroom going and all these are somehow there though I'm not really attending to them till I direct my attention to them. This may take the form of a kind of scatteredness, kind of like being distracted a bit here and there with certain thing taking more importance than others (i.e. when the cat knocks something over). But yeah, its like my attention is over there at the cat and then almost immediately back at the fan on the computer - but at any one time I'm not aware that I'm aware of these things concurrently particularly... then I might think, 'what was I aware of there?' and carry out the remembering out of interest... then I will recall 7 or so things.. or is it while I'm doing something I'm aware of 7 or so things - seems there are a number or things alomost instantly accessible to me while I carry out some task though only one predominantly at any one time - though within a specified time scale (say 10 secs) I can shift smoothly between several objects (pieces of info) as though they all occured to me in a moment... is this the correct way to understand 7 +/-2 or???? still a bit confused:confused:

Cheers

[skip]

Its not that at all guys.

7 -/- 2 is what is being attended to at any given time. That means some combination of visuals, auditory, self talk, olfactory, gustatory, kinesthetic, and some say more. If you add a sound, something just got bumped. If you add a visual, something just got bumped. etc.

Further each of us is patterned so that we maintain roughly the same combination of the above. And we will cycle thru this pattern constantly, roughly every 8-15 seconds.

The pattern each of us use, is what is called our model of the world, and we tend to think thats all there is.

If you give someone exercises that changes the combinations they tend to use, their entire life will change, because how they access the world will have changed for them.

If you know how to manipulate the patterns, you do not need to use regression, or PLR, because the person is offering you everything right now, and you can alter it, and their life will change as a result.

If you teach someone how to recognize these patterns in others and use them, they can sell anyone anything, every time. Either individually or in groups.

If you teach someone to not have a pattern, then they are considered to be enlightened.

hope that helps,

skip

[Simple Guy]

jOhnny#,

You raise interesting questions. Though the seven plus or minus thing
is bandied about often, I honestly don't believe that there is one right way
to think about it or any definite way to distinguish between conscious
and subconscious awareness when the interchange between the
two can be imperceptible to both subject and experimenter. So, I'd
suggest that its greatest value lies in its usefulness as a metaphor.

The guy that started it all was psychologist George Miller. Here is a link
to his original article on this topic: http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000730/ .
Once there, you can click on another link to the full text, if you insist.

Skip,

"Its not that at all guys." I don't see where we disagree.

[j0hnny#]

Simple Guy, very much appreciate your replies and the link - was hoping to ask someone where the idea originated from - nice one...

Skip - relating patterns as modality cycle is a nice piece of understanding to have......

Also, though, it seems from this understanding that what is meant to be understood is that the consciousness we have, cycles, to the extent that 'at any one time' is to be understood as periods of time containing these cycles. The cycle unfolds one piece of information at a time - the total cycle is 7 +/-2 pieces of information... From where you take the starting point is ambiguous and this is why you can talk of pieces of information being 'bumped' - they cease to be part of the cycle (habitual pattern) for a while.... (maybe a few cycles is required to establish the content) so we keep 7+/-2 reserved for the cycle - habitual accessing - which tries to say awareness = this cycle... I guess it happens so fast and with power of memory always ready to feed into it that it is hard to determine whether 'awareness' is being used here in a manner that is safe to be identified as attending. What we are aware of at any one time = (means) predominant cycles of attending a given individual is disposed to over a specified period... say e.g as he/she is engaged in walking the dog between t1 and t4 (where difference between t1 and t2 = at least 15 secs for example)..

On this understanding, it would be still accurate (I think) at a more basic level to say that an individual handles one piece of information at any given time, attending to one piece at a time, in a series that makes up a cycle referred to as 'what an individual is aware of'...

Or is it that instantaneously 7 or so pieces are available? i.e. 7 or so attended to in a flash? If this is the case how would that be determined. By recall? And then wouldn't recall be attending to one by one of seven or so distinguishable in the flash.... surely this can't be right? what will count as a piece of information will surely be determined by what a person takes to be a piece of information in concsious awareness (i.e. by CA mean - what a person in some sense knows/ distinguishes to be 'there' (and not through any kind of inference that they encounter it - can be reported as such etc...). If so, then attending to the experimental content would be a matter of attending to one piece of information that is then distinguished into many, and this cannot be right it seems to me, for then surely 20 or more elements could be distinguished upon reflection.. Further, this kind of account doesn't appear to have the practical implications Skip points out. And we are probably looking for somethig more regular than that anyway...

So, I am inclined toward the cycle description now....

Hopefully this description is not misrepresenting things .... (????)

thanks both for excellent replies.... have been very fruitful to me so far... and though it might seem a less important matter from a practical point of view (?) I am very grateful for your help in getting this far with it....

Simple Guy, I think there must be a way to distinguish between conscious and subconscious awareness... I believe that there is awareness at both levels (or some kind of encounter at least) blindsight experiments (Weizkrantz) demonstrate a strong probability that persons do encounter information they are not consciously aware of (or I would perhaps say - information they do not have access to) - as is also the case with split-brain patients (see Thomas Nagel - 'Brain bisection and the unity of consciousness') - I think it seems probable that the difference comes down to access - what can be accessed = a person is consciously aware of (or consciously encounters), what cannot be (but can be inferred from their behaviour) a person is subconsciously aware of (or subconsciously encounters). It is possible that a person subconsciously encounters 'first' (if you like) and that this arises into conscious encounter through distinction made in the habitual patterns of thought determined as representational systems (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.). Maybe this is getting a bit carried away.....? And maybe I am misrepresenting what is ordinarily considered subconscious... ?

Anyway, I think if it is the case that the 7+/-2 claim is referring to both conscious and subconscious encounters then it might be an inaccurate or misleading piece of information giving... seems to conflate two different meanings of the term awareness...

Cheers

Johnny

[skip]

Johnny,

UH I got a bit lost in your understanding of my description.

Let me try it this way.

At any given moment you have 7 +/- 2 bits of information, that you are operating out of.

This isnt something that you are consciously aware of, but you can become aware of it by attending to it, as people learn to do, in say NLP workshops. Others watch their accessing the information, and ask about speific bits of it, like; "What picture did you see, just now?", etc, and in this way they can learn to become conscious of it.

Now the byte (shorthand for 7 +/- 2) is always up, always filled, and is constantly being altered. Another visual might come in, which knocks something out, and if the person is asked about something they will "refresh" the entire byte, eliminating the old byte, and filling it with the hew in order to respond. Think of it as a computer operating with only 7 bits of main memory. Everything must be routed thru this, and as new information comes in, what there is no longer room for must go into long term storage, or just dropped.

Each of us exhibits a periodicity, in which we habitually 'refresh' what is in the byte. This ocurrs every 8-15 seconds, and varies with context.

Each of us have a pattern, a speific ratio of visuals, auditorys, kinesthetics, and auditory digitals, that tend to make up the byte (7 +/-2 bits) and that remains fairly constant. Say 2 visuals, 3 auditory, 1 auditory digital, 2 kinos. This ratio totally dictates how we understand and relate to the outside world, even tho this is occurring completely 'outside' of our conscious awareness.

We also have developed a predelection to referencing internally or externally. This predelection to referencing determines whether we respond primarily to what is occurring around us, or to what is occurring internally (our fantasy).

Since our sampling rate is so small, and since most of us tend to reference mostly internally, often our responses have little to do with reality.

It is fun to give people exercises that force them to change the ratio of the sampling. You can watch their whole world open up in ways they dont realize immediately, but do realize later. It is very liberating for people to change patterns here, because it changes the way they experience the entire world.

BUT changing one pattern for another is trading one cage for another. It may be a better cage, but itis still a cage.

John Grinder and one of Bandlers early students went around for a while studying people who were "enlightened". It wasnt long before, say within a minute, they could tell if the person they were interviewing, was enlightened or not. They were detecting the byte "pattern", or lack thereof, and the periodicity.

Now if you change your pattern, you instantly become more interesting to others. That is until you get the new pattern well rehursed, and it too becomes 'the old facade'. If you change your pattern, your close friends and loved ones will strangely argue for the old pattern back. "Get you back to your old self."

People whose pattern changes constantly, and who attend primarily externally, are infinitely fascinating to others and are sought out.

People whose pattern stays the same, will have the "same" boy/girl friend over and over, they will have trouble with the "same" boss over and over, no matter how many times they switch. They will move from the east coast to get rid of all the ass holes and find that the same ass holes are all now on the west coast, just different names and faces.

Consciousness is an interesting evolutionary experiment. This self awareness is pretty unique, and the jury is still out as to whether it is a good thing or not.

In the mean time the question is what to do with it. It makes things very interesting indeed. BUT unfortunately it is almost 100% misinterpreted for reality.

is that better?

skip

[Simple Guy]

Skip,

The cognitive psychologists, by virtue of their bent, have a more consciously
based view of the 7 plus or minus 2 paradigm than NLPers. It appears that there
is a confusion of definitions in this thread.

[Simple Guy]

Johnny,

You present interesting thoughts on conciousness. "The habitual habits of
thought" can be observed when the mind is in an observer mode that some
meditative practices bring about. Though these practices do not "allow for
a way to distinguish between conscious and subconscious awareness," they
do allow for a clearer way to see the mind going through its processes.

[j0hnny#]

Thanks guys..... some (again) very useful feedback..

I have been reading Miller's article coupled with both your comments - seems from Miller that - the limitation appears when engaged in a task which requires responses after exposure to what we can already take to be distinct pieces of information... Indeed recognition of the pieces as distinct is prerequiste for the whole experimental situation. The experimental situation, it seems to me, is itself a task in which the individual is engaged. The concern of the individual is to make decisions about e.g. which sounds have been repeated during the course of the experiment. Once the variety of sounds exceeds 7 it becomes guesswork as to remembering which sound is which (move from subtitizing (Miller's word) to estimating) - (or from ease of rememberance to confusion) - the results are pretty much the same whatever the modality...

So in both your own cases (Skip - NLP teaching environment, Simple Guy - in observer mode) and in Miller's (Miller - I will call it memory mode - the participant is engaged in the activity of remembering what information he/she has been presented with) - in all accounts it seems that the individual realises this limitation on reflection. This realisation is in part a product of the reflection.

It seems fair to say that there is therefore a limit (i.e. in ordinary - or non-specialist situations - specialist = perhaps mastered memory skills - like you understand and practice the information that can be found here http://www.vlaardingen.net/~tom/Mainmenu.htm - sorry if its guff - jus did a quick search on Google for this kind of thing) - seems fair to say there is therefore a limit when engaged in reflective tasks to the amount of information you can deal with (where 'deal with' means 'make accurate decisions about') in that activity before becoming confused.

All this might be simplifying the case somewhat - though I think it is perhaps enough to get an intial jist of the situation.

The reflective process reveals that 'a persons attention span' is 7+/-2 pieces of information confusion sets in when asked to make decisions about more than 6or7....

So in the Miller case at least.... attention span is measured (where given a task to do that requires a person make decsions about information they are exposed to during the course of the experiment) at 7+/-2 pieces of information.

They are aware of one piece of information at any one time (i.e. consciously or reflectively aware) - they must be in order to distinguish one piece from another.... they are exposed to 3-4 pieces of information in cylical succession and have no problems deciding the distinction... However, when the informational content is increased to 7 + the ability to recognise the distinctions with precision deteriorates and the participant becomes confused.

So Miller's case is about attention span - in any situation where attention is required for a particular task, confusion sets in where the task involves making decisions - remembering what is what - about distinction of more than 7 distinguishables.

This seems to tell us that in situations where we are involved in tasks of reflection the amount of information we can deal with for the task is roughly 7.

There seems to be a difference in Skip/Simple Guy and Miller's case in the content of the attention - so in Miller there is attention to 'external' information whilst in the NLP environment there is attention to the 'internal' information in fluctuation in the mediative situation (Simple Guy) perhaps there is a combination of the two - or neither is particularly important over the other.



[Sorry, will have to come back and finish this post a bit later... taking a while to finish it for the moment.... will post again with the rest in while .. Cheers, Johnny]

[j0hnny#]

...continuing from last post...

Btw - apologies for all the parenthesis in that last post, makes for awkward reading some of the time...

There seems to be a difference in Skip/Simple Guy and Miller's case in the content of the attention - so in Miller there is attention to 'external' information whilst in the NLP environment there is attention to the 'internal' information in fluctuation in the mediative situation (Simple Guy) perhaps there is a combination of the two - or neither is particularly important over the other.
that should read ', in the meditative...' above...

So could it be that in each case when asked to recount what the particular content is, whether internal or external, the most that can be recounted before confusion sets in is 7 or so... ?

Still, this presupposes that like both your posts say (Skip) or imply (Simple Guy), there is something to realise which is not ordinarily realised. Attention, seems tied up in whatever occupies it, nestling underneath is a flurry of activity which can pass by largely unnoticed - and this is revealed in any activity that forces attention to be occupied with attending.

So the meaning of 'awareness' is important...

I am aware of, when asked to reflect, 7+/-2 pieces of information -


Each of us have a pattern, a speific ratio of visuals, auditorys, kinesthetics, and auditory digitals, that tend to make up the byte (7 +/-2 bits) and that remains fairly constant. Say 2 visuals, 3 auditory, 1 auditory digital, 2 kinos. This ratio totally dictates how we understand and relate to the outside world, even tho this is occurring completely 'outside' of our conscious awareness.

Seems Skip, from what you are saying, the byte is subconsciously received.... I might make a three tier distinction now (conscious awareness - what we are lucidly aware of in any moment, subconscious activity - what we are capable of being aware of in any moment, and unconscious encounter - what we are incapable of being aware of in any moment, but which is inferable as encounter from our behaviour...) .... subconscious activity is accessible on attention to attending.

So now, I think I understand the process of experiencing a little clearer... comments as always are welcome.


Consciousness is an interesting evolutionary experiment. This self awareness is pretty unique, and the jury is still out as to whether it is a good thing or not.

In the mean time the question is what to do with it. It makes things very interesting indeed. BUT unfortunately it is almost 100% misinterpreted for reality.
Skip, not sure that I understand the last part of this claim...i.e. misinterpreted for reality claim? What exactly is reality if consciousness is almost 100% otherwise?

Also, is it possible to get rid of all patterns and become 'enlightened'? How is this done and how is this measured? over what time-scale or what particularly is different about the enlightened persons? surely they will require some way of understanding the world? or are they not consciously aware at all? Very interesting.

Thanks

[Simple Guy]

Johnny,

Your posts suggest some problems in the experimental construct used
by Miller, including, for e.g., in making a distinction between recall
and conscious intake. I agree.

Unconscious intake (and its expression) is more expansive, I'd contend,
than the content of the narrow focus and recall of Miller's experiment.
Hypnotists and NLPers don't have the original or final say on this. -- "Zen
in the Art of Archery" is a classic little book that illustrates an eastern approach to
learning (unconscious competence) that doesn't use our terminology
but is illustrative of effectively bypassing the limitations of consciously
driven learning processes.

[j0hnny#]

-- "Zen
in the Art of Archery" is a classic little book that illustrates an eastern approach to learning (unconscious competence) that doesn't use our terminology
but is illustrative of effectively bypassing the limitations of consciously
driven learning processes.
Heard of it, never read it, must do though...... sounds worth a read...... nice one...:)