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Subject:Re: Information Mapping From:Brad Connatser <cwrites -at- USIT -dot- NET> Date:Tue, 27 Aug 1996 14:05:32 GMT
In article <3222CBD9 -dot- 4581 -at- sodalia -dot- it>, Keith Jeremy Posner
<posner -at- sodalia -dot- it> wrote:
> Information Mapping, or Info Mapping for short, is applied in
> business and technical contexts. Info Mapping is made up of
> principles and components. The underlying principle of
> information is chunking, ie breaking information up into its
> component parts and identifying these chunks of information
> using a label in the margin to the left of the chunk of
> information.
The psycholinguistic principle of "chunking" has been mis-applied to
information mapping. Chunking is a way for short-term memory to synthesize
information from the reading process with information from long-term
memory. A "chunk" of information is the packet of understanding that moves
between short- and long-term memories. Some experiments suggest that
short-term memory can hold seven (plus or minus two) chunks of
information. But a chunk of information can be anything, from a single
number to an abstract understanding of quantum physics. "Chunking"
information during information mapping is really just creating
transitions, signals to help the reader understand where he is in the text
(like labels on a map). Better and less pretentious terms are:
categorizing, dividing, organizing, labeling.
Brad
--
Brad Connatser
Concurrent Communications
cwrites -at- usit -dot- net
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