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When it comes to cognitive architecture and human information processing, chunks are one of the best known and most recognized constructs. Nevertheless, the nature of chunks is still very elusive, especially when it comes to chunks in procedural knowledge. This study deals with basic features of procedural information processing and examines the manifestation of chunks in procedural knowledge. The participants' task was to reconstruct sequences of chess moves. Chess was chosen as an experimental domain, because of its complexity, well-defined rules and standardized measure of chess player strength. From the results we conclude that short-term memory capacity is determined by the combination of the size and amount of procedural chunks recalled to the short-term memory. We have shown that on average, participants with more specialized knowledge operated faster and with larger chunks of procedural information than participants with less specialized knowledge. We have shown that in procedural information processing, the level of expertise and the sorting order of the retrieved information are important factors that influence the amount of procedural chunks retained in the short-term memory. Therefore, the capacity of short-term memory in complex situations cannot be expressed as a simple concept.
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... However, we also argue that consumers who have purchased products from the same product group in the past (i.e., those with product domain knowledge) would not need the same exposure time to post helpful reviews. Past studies suggest that users with prior experience possess chunks that represent functional units (Chase & Simon, 1973;Krivec et al., 2021;Larkin et al., 1980). Chunks are stimulus patterns or configurations that experienced users can recognize (Newell & Simon, 1972). ...
... Expert knowledge is chunked so as to include more procedural knowledge and expertise about the conditions of applicability (Chi et al., 1982). Krivec et al. (2021) found that for the reconstruction of chess moves, highskilled chess players are significantly more accurate than low-skilled players; the speed of information recall is also markedly higher for the high-skilled group. They concluded that users with more specialized knowledge operate faster with larger chunks of procedural information than those with less knowledge. ...
... The basic procedures of building a tent could be i) unpacking the tent supplies, ii) laying down a ground cloth, iii) insetting the tent poles through the frame, iv) raising the tent, v) hammering in the tent pegs, vi) setting up the rain-fly, and vii) testing the firmness of the tent in different weather conditions. Expert users will possess compound procedural chunks containing one or more steps (Krivec et al., 2021). For example, a compound chunk could consist of steps iii), iv), and v). ...
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... In the chess scenario, chess experts could segment large amounts of information about the chess game into small chunks, and further condense it into larger chunks (concatenation) based on the numerous chess games they have played. In particular, during chess game, chunk memory helps chess players to automatically recall memories of perceptual patterns and separates chunks into procedural chunks (segmentation), allowing the experts to manifest faster perception of different situations and produce more accurate decision-making than regular players (Gong et al., 2015;Krivec et al., 2021;Krivec et al., 2009). By contrast, without su cient chess experience, novice players are more inclined to use iterative strategies to predict their actions or the mental state of other players (Powell et al., 2017), which needs more cognitive effort and time demanded by the decision-making. ...
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Previous studies on the chess game demonstrated that chess experts strongly rely on the activation of memory chunks to manifest accurate decision-making. Although the chunk memory might be affected by temporal constraints, it is unclear why the performance of chess experts is not significantly dropped under time pressure. In this study, the underlying cognitive neural mechanism was carefully inspected by accessing the chess game performance between 20 local experienced and 20 inexperienced chess players with 1-minute and 5-minute time constraints. In addition, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) recordings were carried out for each individual from the two groups while playing a 1-minute or 5-minute chess game. It was discovered that under temporal constraints, players exhibited different patterns of functional connectivity in frontal-parietal regions, suggesting that temporal stress can enhance segmentation processes in chess games. In particular, the experienced group exhibited significantly enhanced functional connectivity networks under time pressure including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal gyrus, supramarginal gyrus, and postcentral gyrus, which demonstrated the important role of the segmentation process for experienced players under time pressure. Our study found that experienced players were able to enhance recall, reorganize and integrate chunks to improve chess performance under time pressure.
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