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Updated: Jul 29, 2026
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The (Spatial) Memory Game: Testing the Relationship Between Spatial Language, Object Knowledge, and Spatial Cognition
Published on: February 19, 2018
Templates in chess memory: a mechanism for recalling several boards
1Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
Cognitive Psychology
|August 1, 1996
Summary
Skilled chess players
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Expert Performance
Background:
- The chunking theory of memory posits short-term memory limitations.
- Expert chess players' memory capacity is investigated in relation to this theory.
Purpose of the Study:
- To empirically test the limits of chess memory against the chunking theory.
- To explore how chess expertise influences short-term memory recall.
Main Methods:
- Experiments involving chess players of varying skill levels recalling chess positions.
- Varying the number of presented boards and inter-stimulus latencies.
Main Results:
- Recall accuracy decreases with more presented boards.
- Expert players exceed predictions of the original chunking theory.
- Increased latency between presentations improves recall.
Conclusions:
- The original chunking theory is insufficient to explain expert chess memory.
- A revised theory incorporating long-term memory retrieval structures (templates) is proposed.
- Chess experts utilize both short-term chunks and long-term memory templates for rapid information storage.
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