The Limit of Mental Structures

ABSTRACT

The “magical” number of 4 has been demonstrated to limit much of human information processing. The relevant evidence is briefly reviewed. It is proposed that the organization of processing structures is based on interconnected bidirectional pairs, with every element paired with every other one. The limit arises because of the large increase in links among elements required beyond structures of size 3 and 4.

Keywords:

• organization theory
• information processing
• working memory
• subitizing

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Nelson Cowan for comments on a previous version of this article.

Notes

1. A cautionary note should be entered that available date on the “limit” are based on Western populations and different limits may have developed in radically different cultural settings.