“Templates in Chess Memory: A Mechanism for Recalling Several Boards”, 1996-08 (; backlinks):
This paper addresses empirically and theoretically a question derived from the chunking theory of memory (1973a, 1973b): To what extent is skilled chess memory limited by the size of short-term memory (about 7 chunks)?
This question is addressed first with an experiment where subjects, ranking from class A players to grandmasters, are asked to recall up to 5 positions presented during 5 s each.
Results: show a decline of percentage of recall with additional boards, but also show that expert players recall more pieces than is predicted by the chunking theory in its original form.
A second experiment shows that longer latencies between the presentation of boards facilitate recall.
In a third experiment, a chess master gradually increases the number of boards he can reproduce with higher than 70% average accuracy to 9, replacing as many as 160 pieces correctly.
To account for the results of these experiments, a revision of the Chase-Simon theory is proposed. It is suggested that chess players, like experts in other recall tasks, use long-term memory retrieval structures (1982) or templates in addition to chunks in short-term memory to store information rapidly.